


I'd run away with you (Would you run with me?)

by filthynebula



Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/F, Not Cuba, Post-Season/Series 03, Sexual Content, but i doubt its the holiday you expect, eve and villanelle run away together, in two parts, is what im talkin bout, its basically villaneve on holiday by the ocean, part 1 may be the softest thing i have written in my entire life, part 2 will be slightly filthier, set shortly after 3x08
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-06
Updated: 2020-08-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:54:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 21,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24577153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/filthynebula/pseuds/filthynebula
Summary: This isn’t a long term plan. They are just escaping somewhere for a little while. To let things settle. To figure things out. To exist in the same space and see what will happen.
Relationships: Eve Polastri/Villanelle | Oksana Astankova
Comments: 68
Kudos: 505





	1. Progress

**Author's Note:**

  * For [OneLittleTigger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OneLittleTigger/gifts).



> because she likes the ocean and killing eve and me

“This is nice.”

Eve lowers her magazine and makes eye contact with the woman sitting across from her. 

Villanelle is in a shitty plastic seat, one of many in the long row that occupies the waiting area of their gate. She is still wearing her yellow jacket from the night before. Eve will forever think of it as the colour of a new sun, a new day. 

Fuck it if she hasn’t gone and become sentimental in the past 24 hours.

Eve sits across from Villanelle in an equally shitty seat. She sits with her legs crossed, relaxed, with the magazine in her hands. Of course, she’d hardly been reading it, really. Between Carolyn shooting Paul and Konstantin responsible by proxy for Kenny’s death, Eve has found it hard to focus on the words swimming along the pages in front of her. Incredibly, the only thing that has soothed her since the events of the night before is the steady presence of the woman across from her. 

And to think, they’d almost walked away from each other for good. Eve could almost laugh. She settles for a small smile instead.

“What are you smiling about?”

Villanelle is leaning forwards with her elbows on her knees. It is a very _Villanelle_ kind of pose. Eve wonders if the younger woman is bothered by the fact that she hasn’t been able to shower or change since the Bitter Pill, the murder, the bridge. 

God, was that only yesterday?

Villanelle must get tired of her silence because she huffs once, stands up brusquely, and crosses the narrow aisle to a seat next to Eve. She sags into it with a disturbing amount of grace before slinging an arm across the back of Eve’s seat. Eve feels the pressure lightly along her shoulders, a faint sensation against the bulk of her jacket.

There was a time when if they were ever this close, Eve would have bristled at the attention, or floundered in it, or tried to ignore it altogether. Now, she feels a warmth settle in her chest and she tilts her head ever so slightly to the side until it is resting against Villanelle’s shoulder.

“This _is_ nice.”

Of all things, it is the boarding call that forces them apart. Not a knife, not a gun. It’s almost blissful, and Eve can’t help the small, victorious smile that curls along her lips.

* * *

The Keflavik International Airport is one of the smallest airports Eve has ever been in. Of course, Eve had never travelled extensively before she started chasing Villanelle. Even now, she has really only flown in and out of a few major cities like London and Barcelona and Moscow. She supposes the Bradley International Airport in Connecticut had been small, but it’s been too long to remember it clearly now.

She wonders if this is the smallest airport Villanelle has ever been in. She doubts it. 

Villanelle had said to travel light so Eve had packed a few essentials into a small duffel that qualified as a carry-on. Villanelle hasn’t even brought that. Eve wonders if the woman has a plan, and finds that it doesn’t bother her too much, this not knowing. She thinks that maybe she is beginning to trust Villanelle.

Either that or her recently developed sentimentality is making her overlook any flaws in their plan. It doesn’t matter, really. This isn’t a long term plan. They are just escaping somewhere for a little while. To let things settle. To figure things out. To exist in the same space, without ulterior motives, and see what happens.

Above all the thoughts of Carolyn and Konstantin and Kenny and Paul, Eve thinks about the bridge the most. It has only been a day, but still, she will shut her eyes and relive it and never stop to wonder what may have happened differently. Any divergent story is no longer hers. This is her life, the here and the now.

A hand at her hip brings her out of her thoughts. Villanelle seems determined to remind Eve that she is there in soft, little touches while they occupy the same space. Eve doesn’t mind it at all.

“Are you ready to go?”

Villanelle hovers behind her. Eve feels like maybe she could take a step back into her, meet her, sink inside and stay there for a while. She resists. 

“Yes, let’s go.”

They walk side by side throughout the Arrivals area before exiting the airport and looking for a cab. It is late, approaching midnight, but this far north the early summer sun still hugs the horizon, and Eve finds that she doesn’t feel tired at all.

They find a taxi, one of a scant three, and they climb into the back. Villanelle tells the driver to take them to a good hotel, that they don’t care which. The driver cocks his head at the request but otherwise just smiles politely and nods once before pulling away from the curb.

“Don’t you speak Icelandic?”

Villanelle shakes her head and looks out the window at the lowlands around them. It is a hilly, rocky, grassy landscape, but in the distance, there are mountains. Some of them are probably volcanoes. “I only know eight languages.”

“Only eight?” Eve teases. She is rewarded with a smile, albeit it is directed at the passing hills. She isn’t sure why Villanelle doesn’t look at her. 

Before she can worry too much, Eve watches as Villanelle takes a hand from her lap and extends it towards Eve, palm up along the middle seat. Eve looks for Villanelle’s eyes but the other woman is still staring out the window. 

Eve takes her hand. She lets her fingers caress Villanelle’s palm before wrapping them loosely around her knuckles, and she sees the other woman let out a sigh of relief. Eve files that away for later. They can’t speak openly in the back of the cab.

The cab ride is made longer by virtue of the silence. No one speaks. Eve hangs onto Villanelle’s hand and looks out her own window at the new place she finds herself in. She can’t remember the last time she’s seen so much open land. She supposes it would have been in Poland, although she’d hardly bothered to admire the landscape then. And before that it was probably when she’d been in Bletcham, rescuing Frank with Elena. There had been open land there too, marred by Villanelle’s appearance over a rise, approaching their car with her gun drawn and raised.

Different people, Eve thinks. They were such different people, back then. She feels Villanelle squeeze her hand. She thinks that change is good.

The airport is a ways outside of the city but eventually, they make it into the capital. Reykjavík is small and charming. The city is surprisingly alive for the middle of the night, but with daylight still shining Eve supposes that some people may choose to continue on with their days rather late into the night. For herself, she finally lets out a yawn.

The cab driver picks a small, boutique hotel just off of the downtown core. Of course, the downtown is nothing like that of a big and bustling city. It is a smattering of buildings slightly less residential looking than the rest, but Eve finds that she likes that. They exit the cab and thank the driver. Villanelle pays him with cash pulled from one of her deep pockets. It is Icelandic krona and Eve has no idea when she found the time to get it. It’s sort of thrilling, watching Villanelle do something as mundane as paying for a cab.

The driver smiles at them and drives off. They enter the hotel, a narrow three-storey building that could pass for a large house, and approach the front desk. From there, Eve tunes everything out. This is Villanelle’s specialty. Instead, Eve takes a seat in a comfy-looking armchair and lets her eyes drift shut.

She has never been this relaxed while in the presence of the Russian assassin. Ex-assassin. She isn’t sure what Villanelle’s job title is at the moment. It doesn’t matter.

Eve sees a night sky painted across her eyelids. She sees the London Bridge and sighs contentedly. 

* * *

“You told them what?”

Eve asks it as Villanelle is unlocking the door to their room.

“That we are honeymooning.”

Eve can’t see Villanelle’s face, hovering behind her as she is, but she’s sure the other woman is smirking. “Why would you tell them that?”

Eve watches Villanelle’s shoulders shrug nonchalantly. “Because I felt like it.”

The lock clicks and Villanelle opens the door wide.

The room is small and modest; homey. There are two large windows along the far wall that will look out onto the main street when the blinds are opened. For now, the midnight sun makes do with shining through the cracks along their edges. It makes the room shadowed and dark, but they can see the rest of it well enough. There is a bathroom and two chairs and not much else aside from the bed. The singular bed.

Eve rolls her eyes. Before she can make any remarks, Villanelle shakes her head.

“Don’t worry, Eve. I will push the chairs together and sleep there.”

The words tumble from Eve’s lips before she can think to stop them. “You’ll do no such thing. Come here.”

Villanelle turns to look at her. Her expression might be unreadable, except that Eve has seen it before. It’s how Villanelle looked at her on the bridge, right before she turned Eve around and let them stand back-to-back. Eve beckons her again when Villanelle doesn’t move.

“Come _here._ ”

It is rather adorable, the way in which Villanelle shuffles towards her. She is the most self-assured and confident person that Eve has ever met, and then there are these moments where she seems like a lost child. Eve hasn’t figured out yet what triggers the change. She remembers sitting with Villanelle at the dance hall. It had happened then, too.

Once the younger woman is close enough, Eve pushes forwards and falls into her. She brings her arms up and forces them under Villanelle’s as she lets them wrap tight across the woman’s back. Eve dips her chin, makes it so that the top of her head rests under the blonde’s jaw. She feels something like a gasp escape from the lungs that lay hidden beneath the yellow coat.

They stood this close to dance, only this time they are alone. 

Villanelle moves her arms. One drapes along Eve’s back. The other rests against the back of her head, long fingers burying themselves in Eve’s mess of dark curls. She wishes, for a moment, that she’d showered first, but Villanelle sighs against her and the thought vanishes like smoke in the wind. 

They stand like that for a while, neither of them speaking, until Villanelle untangles her hand from Eve’s hair and pulls her chest back by a few inches. Eve feels the movement and pulls her head from Villanelle, eyes training upwards to look at her. 

“Thank you for turning around.”

Villanelle says it so softly, sincerity bleeding from the words as if they are open wounds in her heart. Eve doesn’t know what to say. She smiles, arms still locked around Villanelle, the yellow jacket glowing where stripes of sunlight manage to strike its surface. She says what comes to mind.

“Let’s go to bed.”

Villanelle closes her eyes, smiles, and nods. The gesture is so small but Eve feels her heart swell at the sight of it. 

They are making progress.

* * *

Sleeping is an odd affair. Villanelle has not packed clothes. Eve has packed enough things only for herself.

“You didn’t think that you might need some more clothing?”

Villanelle shrugs easily. She has been in a very good mood and Eve takes the credit for it. It was obviously the hug. 

“I figured I would buy some here. But I did not account for arriving at-” Villanelle checks the clock “-well, now it is nearly half-past one in the morning.”

Eve can’t bring herself to be annoyed, she is too endeared. They really are like honeymooners.

She stands beside her side of the bed in her sleep clothes: an old t-shirt and a pair of shorts. Villanelle stands on the other side of the bed, yellow jacket still draped across her shoulders and fastened at the front. Eve wonders if she’s been naked under there this entire time. It’s a silly thought. It makes her chuckle.

“What is so funny?”

“You,” Eve shrugs. “Take that jacket off.”

Villanelle arches an eyebrow and Eve rolls her eyes. Still, the younger woman reaches for the collar of her jacket and unfastens it. She lets it slide off her shoulders and pool onto the ground. Eve wonders if she tries to be sexy as she does it or if the fluidity comes naturally. Probably the latter.

Underneath the yellow jacket is one of the most subtle outfits Eve has ever seen the woman wear. Black dress pants had peeked out from the bottom of the jacket before, and so the long black slacks don’t really come as a surprise. The top is nice. It is a dull kind of blue, unobtrusive, and Eve thinks that Villanelle looks like she has just come home from a typical day at the office. The office of a modelling agency, maybe, as her eyes find Villanelle’s.

_“It is a very beautiful face.”_

Eve smiles at the memory. It doesn’t matter how plainly she could be dressed, that face would turn heads anywhere. Eve isn’t about to tell her that, though. She looks her up and down.

“I have a sweater you can sleep in.”

“And these?” Villanelle gestures at her pants.

Eve shrugs again. “It’s not my fault you didn’t pack anything besides… what did you bring anyway?”

Villanelle smiles coyly. “Just myself and twenty thousand euros.”

Eve’s jaw drops. “You brought _what?”_

“How did you think we were going to get around? Or eat? Or live?”

“I…” Eve frowns. She looks suspiciously at the yellow coat on the floor.

“You must have been very caught up in the excitement of running away with _me_ ,” the blonde teases.

Eve huffs and turns towards one of the chairs where her duffel bag is resting. “How did you even… you know what, nevermind.” She opens her bag and rifles through it, looking for the sweater. When she finds it, she tosses it at Villanelle unceremoniously. 

“Here.”

Villanelle catches and unfurls it. “Really?” She raises an eyebrow at the sight of it.

“I grabbed the first sweater I saw that looked warm and comfy. Sue me.”

Villanelle twists the sweater in her hands so that the front emblem is facing Eve. It is an old grey thing with a faded image of Mickey Mouse on the front. ‘Disneyland’ is written underneath his smiling mouse-face.

“This is worse than a turtleneck.”

“Good thing you only have to wear it for one night then. Come on. It may still be light out but my body knows it's late.”

With that, Eve crawls into her side of the bed. Villanelle shakes her head ruefully at the sweater in her hands but otherwise doesn’t offer any more comments. She pads over to the bathroom and shuts the door softly, closing herself inside to get changed. Eve thinks it's sweet, even if it is a completely normal thing to do when sharing a room with someone. She decides she should do the normal thing too and pretend to be asleep when Villanelle comes back. 

At least, she probably shouldn’t be staring at the bathroom door when it opens again. 

Eve rolls onto her side and shuts her eyes. She is sleepy but her brain seems intent upon thinking of all the things it shouldn’t be thinking about this close to bedtime. She wonders what Carolyn will do now that she’s shot Paul in the head. She wonders where Konstantin will go with his money and passports, and if his daughter will really go with him. She wonders what the Twelve are doing, if they know that one of their assassins has gone rogue, if they are hunting them down as she lays in this bed in Reykjavík and, for the first time since this all started, doesn’t feel compelled to hunt them in return.

She hears the bathroom door click open and Villanelle stepping softly around the room. A rustling near the chairs tells Eve that she’s placed some clothing down on the cushion. Two soft thuds mark the sound of her slipping her shoes off beside the bed. Eve listens to these trivial noises and revels in their simplicity. They are the sounds of a woman preparing to crawl into bed. The sounds of a woman who, in a moment, will be lying next to her. 

It reminds Eve of Paris, even if it shouldn’t. She rolls over.

Villanelle is midway into the bed when she sees Eve staring at her. She pauses and it makes for a comical pose that she’s frozen in; one leg is underneath the sheets, one hand pressed into the mattress. The other leg, foot still on the floor, suspends her in this strange kind of balancing act, and her other hand grips the comforter.

“What?”

“I was thinking about Paris.”

Villanelle doesn’t tense, exactly, but she frowns. “Are you going to stab me again?”

Eve chuckles softly. “No. I don’t have a knife."

“It is not reassuring to know that is the only thing stopping you.” She says it easily, teasingly, but Eve sees tension in her eyes. 

“Relax. I was just thinking that it was the only other time we’ve been in a bed together.”

Villanelle does relax. She finishes climbing into the bed. “We are not conventional.”

Eve smiles softly. “No, we are not.” 

There is a beat of silence. Then,

“I used your toothbrush.”

Eve frowns. “We’re going shopping first thing tomorrow.” Then she pauses, thoughts still floating haphazardly around her mind. “Before we call it a night, do you want to talk about… anything?”

Villanelle shakes her head. They are silent another moment more before the blonde brings a hand from beneath the covers and rests it along Eve’s cheek. It is so reminiscent of Paris that Eve wonders if she should flinch. She doesn’t. That makes her happy.

“Goodnight, Eve.”

“Goodnight, Villanelle.”

Villanelle drops her hand back beneath the covers. Eve watches her exhale slowly, as if concentrating on something, before she lets her eyes drift shut. Eve watches her for a moment or two more before she breathes deeply too, and closes her eyes to sleep.

* * *

Eve wakes up pleasantly warm. That’s how she knows she isn’t in her shitty bed in her shitty apartment in London. It is always swelteringly hot in that room. Here it is much more comfortable. 

_Here_ , it turns out, is pressed tight against Villanelle. Eve can feel the rise and fall of the woman’s chest somewhere beneath and beside her. She is groggy from sleep but she is starting to wake up, and she registers that, wherever she has nestled, she fits quite well. She opens her eyes lazily.

She is pressed against Villanelle’s chest. The top of Eve’s head rests on Villanelle's shoulder and she has one hand splayed possessively across the young woman’s waist. Villanelle sleeps on her back and her head is turned away from Eve, but her arm snakes along Eve’s shoulders, and her hand rests softly somewhere along the middle of Eve’s back. Eve wonders if this is entirely appropriate. She decides to give it a moment before she rolls away.

One moment turns to five turns to ten and before she knows it, Villanelle is stirring beneath her. Her forehead creases like she is confused by the prospect of waking up, and Eve commits the sight to memory. It is far too cute a thing to be forgotten with the dawn.

Villanelle turns her head towards Eve. She cracks one eye open lazily. “Hi.”

It’s just one goddamn eye, and it looks at her blearily, but Eve still finds it mesmerizing. Her voice is hoarse with sleep and affection when she answers, “Good morning.”

“You are a clingy sleeper.”

“Just making sure that you don’t try walking away from me again in the night.”

The joke tumbles from her lips easily, and Villanelle smiles her cocky smile. “I just needed proof of your devotion.”

Eve takes the hand resting around Villanelle’s waist and pinches her. “Don’t be an ass.” 

She is glad that Villanelle is still seemingly half-asleep because Eve realizes at that moment that the blonde is sleeping in her Disneyland sweater and not much else. The material of her underwear slides under Eve’s fingertips as her hand moves along her hip. Any lower and Eve would find the bare skin of her thighs. Eve blushes at the thought and tries not to think about why.

Meanwhile, Villanelle laughs, low and easy. “I may no longer be a killer, but I think I will always be an asshole.”

Eve ducks her head to avoid Villanelle’s eyes. She almost says something foolish. Something too heavy, too emotional for their early morning bliss. Instead, Eve rolls away from her and throws her legs over the side of the bed.

“You know what goes great with assholes? A museum full of dicks.”

* * *

Four hours, brunch, and a shopping trip later, they are wandering around the Icelandic Phallological Museum. Considering she’s a woman who’s chopped off a few knobs, Villanelle certainly seems to be enjoying herself. Eve smiles, amused, as she watches the young woman peer into a tank that houses the penis of a sperm whale. 

“Eve, look at this. This is like… the size of my leg and three times as thick.” 

Villanelle stands next to the tank, turns, and beckons towards Eve before gesturing enthusiastically at her own leg. Eve has to fight back a laugh. She settles for an animated snort instead.

Villanelle is dressed in something _plain_ and Eve can’t quite get over the normalcy of it. Tight, dark jeans hug her legs and a black bomber jacket rests loosely on her shoulders. A plain white shirt peeks out from underneath it. She’s wearing Nikes and her hair is up in a bun. She looks like the epitome of cool youthfulness. Eve feels drab beside her in faded jeans and a burgundy turtleneck.

That is until she looks at Villanelle’s smile again and all the drabness melts away. How can one feel drab when faced with a smile like that?

Oh, the sentimentality. She begrudgingly admits that it’s growing on her.

She steps in beside Villanelle and stares at the tank. 

“That is alarming.” 

Next to her, Villanelle snickers. Eve turns to look at her. “What’s so funny? Aside from the whale penis.”

“There was a man at your workplace… the Better Pill-”

“-Bitter Pill-”

“-Whatever. There was a man there, big guy, young, he asked what I do with all the penises…” Villanelle trails off. 

Eve frowns at her, glances at the tank, at the gigantic dick suspended in a translucent fluid, then back to Villanelle. “You didn’t.”

“I told him I pickled the good ones.” Villanelle is grinning widely. 

Eve purses her lips in an attempt not to laugh. She is the mature one between the two of them. She is the adult.

She can’t help it. She laughs loudly and several other patrons of the museum glance her way, shooting her disapproving looks. She thinks that they should lighten up. They’re in a room full of dicks; what do they expect?

“You’re incorrigible,” Eve says once she can stop laughing.

“Incorrigible?” Villanelle’s tongue fumbles over the English word.

“You’re inappropriate and you’ll never change.”

“Huh.” Villanelle glances back at the tank. “Well, it’s half true.”

Eve doesn’t ask her to elaborate. They both know what she means.

“Come on.” Eve pokes her. “We’ve got more knobs to see.”

Villanelle lets herself be poked and prodded throughout the small museum. Eve can’t imagine a stranger place for them to be after everything that’s happened in the past two days. 

She thinks maybe the utter absurdity of it is why it works so well.

* * *

The penis museum is fun, and Reykjavík is nice, but they decide that they should leave the next day. Villanelle is certain that the plane tickets to Iceland will be traceable. She wants to get them out of the capital and somewhere a bit more remote, where their trail can fade into nothingness as they figure out their next move.

The decision of _where_ to go is the result of a chance encounter with a tourism agency. They walk by the small office on their way back from the museum and Eve catches a glimpse of a poster in the window.

“There,” she points at it as she wanders away from Villanelle’s side. “We should go there.”

Villanelle frowns as she follows her, hands buried in the pockets of her jacket. “Húsavík?” she asks when she can read what’s printed on the poster. “‘The whale-watching capital of Iceland’? Are you being serious, Eve?”

Eve shrugs and looks up at her. “Yeah, why not? Might be fun.” She pokes at Villanelle’s side.

This is the new normal between them. These odd moments of teasing fun or gentle touching that are the kinds of things that belong to people who mean something more to each other.

Not that Villanelle doesn’t mean something to Eve. Villanelle is kind of _everything_. But Eve thinks that the ways they act sometimes seem reserved for very good friends, or lovers. 

Eve doesn’t dwell on it. Villanelle is looking at the poster quizzically. “This is where you want to go?”

“Well, if you don’t want to go there, just say so,” Eve huffs. 

Villanelle turns to look at her, serious. “I am going to go wherever you go. It doesn’t really matter where.”

Eve opens her mouth but nothing comes out. She closes it. The corner of Villanelle’s mouth quirks into a smile because she knows Eve has been rendered speechless by the statement.

“So… whales?” Villanelle offers in a mock attempt to save her. 

Eve shakes her head at her, if only to hide her embarrassment. “Yeah, it’ll be fun, you dick.”

“I have seen enough dicks for ten lifetimes today.”

Eve laughs at that. “You and me both. Come on, I’m hungry.”

“Dicks make you hungry?”

Eve shoves her. “Stop that.”

“What?” Villanelle asks innocently as they resume their leisurely walk, hands still resting in her pockets.

“Being an asshole,” Eve says.

 _Making me like you_ , she thinks. 

* * *

They don’t rent a car. The drive to Húsavík takes most of the day, between two bus transfers and the way the highway roughly follows the coast. It winds up and around until they are in the northern reaches of the island and in some of the last places tourists go before they tend to turn back around. 

The highway continues, of course, around the entire country, east and south and west again, but they would probably want their own car for that. It would be a better place to lose the forces that are looking for them, but it would be equally as likely for them to get lost themselves. Eve wonders if maybe that would be good for them.

She decides that what they are doing now is enough. Is perfect. Is exactly what they need.

Eve looks at the woman in the seat next to her. Well, Villanelle had been next to her at one point. Now she’s flopped over a bit, asleep, her head lolling against her own shoulder as her body tips precariously into the aisle. Eve’s heart blooms with affection at the sight of it.

She had wanted to be carefree, and, asleep at least, she looks to have achieved it.

She is still wearing her bomber jacket and jeans. Underneath the jacket is a deep green cotton v-neck, something Eve would expect to see on a college student. Villanelle’s hair is up, a messy bun resting high on her head so as to not bulge between her neck and the seat. Eve thinks she looks beautiful. She smiles.

A brand new knapsack sits between Villanelle’s feet. It should make Eve nervous that nearly two hundred banknotes are stashed inside of it, amongst new clothes and her own damn toothbrush, but Eve can’t bring herself to be concerned.

The bus is puttering along the final stretch of highway before its last stop in Akureyri. There, they will transfer one final time and ride a little over an hour to Húsavík. Eve’s stomach growls. It pulls her attention from Villanelle as she reaches for the duffel bag stowed at her feet and rummages around for a snack. When she finds one, she peels off the wrapper and gazes out the window. 

Eve has seen mountains and she’s seen hills but she can’t quite figure out how the landscape around them fits into either classification. It has both, and they’re all rather scattered about, not quite forming a mountain range but so far apart as to be isolated from each other, either. Maybe the land is a metaphor for her life with Villanelle. Always surrounding, never within reach. She glances away from the window and looks at Villanelle again. Only, she is well within reach, now.

Eve lets her hand slide gently between the outside of Villanelle’s thigh and her limp hand resting next to it. Eve feels the warmth of her palm, the muscle of her leg. She exhales, long and content, before looking back towards the window again.

The rest of the bus is relatively empty. It will be tourist season soon, and maybe then it will be busier, but Eve thinks most people rent their own cars or pack into specially designated tour buses. Their bus is not that. Their bus is a means of escape within their escape. 

Villanelle’s hand twitches, fingers flexing around Eve’s own. A smile ghosts along Eve’s lips. She tilts her head back and closes her eyes and waits for the end of the line.

* * *

“Is it bigger or smaller than your hometown?”

Eve is surveying Húsavík. Or, what she sees of it from their bus stop. She stands side by side with Villanelle and fights off a yawn. Road trips have always made her sleepy, and despite all the new scenery along the way, their long trip by bus was no different. She wants to find a bed, or a chair, or a floor even, at this point. But it’s only 4:30 in the afternoon. 

Húsavík is small. The poster at the tourist centre had said that the population was less than 3,000. It is nestled along the hillside of an inlet called Shaky Bay. On the Húsavík side, the coast is sloping hills of green grass. Across the bay, imposing mountains seem to rise straight out of the sea, dusted with snow despite the approaching summer. Eve had only caught a glimpse of them briefly along the drive. They are hidden now, behind houses and the other features of civilization. 

Most of the houses are small and cozy, and the streets snake around in total defiance of the concept of ‘blocks’. The skies are overcast, and any other day it might make the town feel melancholic, except that Villanelle is standing next to her and Eve has had these blissful little embers burning in her heart since their night on the bridge.

“Definitely bigger,” Villanelle replies. “Gryzmet is…” She frowns, then holds up her hand, showing Eve her thumb and forefinger pressed tightly together. “A speck of dust.”

Eve watches as Villanelle grimaces at her own words. Eve only knows that Villanelle went home. She still doesn’t know the details. She reaches a hand up and gingerly places it on the other woman’s arm. “You’re going to have to tell me about it eventually.”

Villanelle turns and stares at her with a heavy gaze. Eve meets it as evenly as she can manage, despite the fluttering in her stomach. 

It really is a beautiful face. 

After a few seconds, Villanelle still hasn’t spoken. She’s just looking at Eve like _that_.

“Do I have something on my face?”

Villanelle’s mouth twists as if she is torn between a smile and an exasperated frown. She settles for another blank stare, albeit a weak one. Eve sees amusement flicker in her eyes. 

“We should find someplace to stay.”

“Are we honeymooning here as well?”

“Hm,” Villanelle is looking back at the surrounding town. Eve does the same. “Sadly, I am already married.”

Eve had just begun to turn away but the words rip her back. She almost gives herself whiplash with the force of the motion. And yet, once she’s looking at Villanelle again, she can’t find any words that seem good enough. She fumbles, because _seriously?_ Villanelle smirks. 

“Come on, you need food before you can be fiesty.”

“You didn’t mention that before- you- but-” Eve struggles, then settles on, “What about finding a place?”

Villanelle shrugs. “We will find something.” Then she starts off down the road towards the busiest part of the town: the harbourfront. 

It isn’t until a few minutes later that Eve finally thinks of some kind of remark.

“Hey, you know I’m technically still married too. So, this can’t really be a honeymoon.”

It isn’t her best, and Villanelle isn’t fazed by it either. 

“I suppose not. Besides, most honeymoons have sex.”

Eve doesn’t have a response to that one. She doesn’t trust herself enough to even try. 

* * *

They walk along the harbourfront until they settle on a place to eat. The restaurant is a dark, wooden-slatted building that reminds Eve of a cabin in the woods. It’s cozy and the back of it has a patio that looks out onto the pier. They decide to sit inside because despite the long days, they’re just shy of the Arctic Circle and without the sunlight, it’s gotten a bit chilly. The interior is rustic too, and they sit at a table for two that’s secluded in one corner of the large dining room.

It’s only the second or third time they’ve really eaten together since the bridge. Villanelle sits across from Eve and eyes the menu dubiously. Eve wonders what she’s used to. Probably something much grander than this, although Eve finds it quite charming. 

They sit in silence for a while, both glancing at their menus until a server comes by their table and greets them. Villanelle smiles easily and orders. Eve watches her, the smooth way she interacts with strangers, the confidence in something so simple as the way she picks out a meal. 

Eve blinks and shakes her head. It’s impolite to stare. She realizes that Villanelle and the server are both patiently waiting for her order. She blushes. 

“Uh, the fish and chips.” She stumbles through it, pointing at the menu as she does. Their server smiles and heads back to the kitchen. Eve reaches for the glass of water next to her. When she’s had her sip, she places the glass back on the table and tries to look at Villanelle levelly.

“So.”

“So.”

“Russia.”

“No.” Villanelle says it firmly, with no room to argue.

Eve huffs. “Fine. Rome.”

“Paris.”

Eve rolls her eyes. “No.” 

“London, then,” Villanelle tries. 

“What?”

“London,” she repeats, glancing at her nails like they fascinate her. “The bus.”

Eve’s eyes widen, then she begins shaking her head emphatically. “No. That’s… off-limits.”

“Off-limits like Russia?”

“ _Is_ Russia off limits?” Eve asks it gently, because really, she doesn’t want to pry. She wants Villanelle to take her time, to feel safe with her.

And isn’t that a revelation. She wants an assassin who killed her closest friend to feel _safe_ while they eat fish and chips together.

Villanelle sighs. “Eventually.”

“Huh?”

“I will tell you eventually, Eve. Now-” Villanelle rolls her shoulders. “-stop pestering me about it.”

Eve rolls her eyes. “Of course.”

Their food arrives a short while later. Eve watches Villanelle eat a burger, of all things, until Villanelle catches her staring and flicks a french fry across the table at her. Eve would chastise her except that it makes her smile and the words die before they’ve even formed on her lips. 

“You eat like a starving animal.” As she says it, Eve wonders if it’s possible to say such a thing affectionately. She’d meant it affectionately. Luckily, Villanelle doesn’t seem to take any offence.

“It was, how you say, dog-eat-dog at the orphanage.” She bares her teeth and then licks her tongue over one of her incisors. “I lost this tooth when an older boy tried to steal my dinner.”

Eve’s eyebrows raise in disbelief. She wants to ask about the orphanage, about how old she was when she went there, how old she was when she left, but she doesn’t. She envisions a tiny Villanelle, or a tiny Oksana, and a faceless bully towering over her. “What did you do?”

“After I told him that he couldn’t have it, he hit me in the mouth. I think the tooth was already loose, but he thought he was so tough for knocking it out. Anyway, I spit the blood in his face, and then on my food.” Villanelle grins proudly. “He did not want it much then.”

“Wow.”

“Then,” Villanelle pops a fry into her mouth and keeps talking. “I went to his room when he was asleep and drove a butter knife into the back of his hand.”

“Of course you did.” Eve isn’t even really surprised. She’d seen the report on Oksana Astankova before she became Villanelle. She knows what she’d been capable of even then, before the Twelve moulded her into an assassin. She hazards another question. “When did you leave the orphanage?”

Villanelle looks down at the table, at her plate that has been picked clean except for the crumbs of a few fries. “When it burned down.” She gives a little shrug.

Eve frowns, understanding slowly. “You didn’t.”

Villanelle looks up at her. “I might have.” Before Eve can comment, she huffs defensively. “What? All the kids there were annoying anyway. Shits, all of them.”

Eve thinks maybe she should be a little bit horrified but she isn’t. Truth be told, she doesn’t even think about whether any children made it out alive or not. She doesn’t dwell on whether or not that means she’s a horrible person. Instead, she says, “You’re a shit too, you know. And you definitely were back then.”

Villanelle grins again, glad that Eve is not going to admonish her for committing arson. “Yes, definitely. But I was the shit with the gasoline.”

It seems immoral, maybe, but Eve can’t help but laugh.

* * *

They decide to stay in an apartment. Theirs is one of six that can be rented out for short stays. They find it by wandering around town after dinner. The building is squat, two-storeys, and white, like many of the buildings in town. It seems to operate like a hotel, and they check-in at the front desk when they decide this is where they want to stay. The attendant smiles politely albeit uncomfortably when Villanelle tells him that they are both married women who have grown tired of their spouses and have come to Húsavík to watch whales and begin a torrid affair. In the background, Eve rolls her eyes. She would've preferred to be newlyweds.

They get the key to their apartment and head up the stairs. The interior of the building is very modern. Eve thinks it was probably built after the whale-watching industry took off, when there was a demand for accommodations during tourist season.

Villanelle unlocks the door and they wander into their new… home? They’ve booked it for five days, but it’s not high season yet, so they’d be allowed to extend their stay if they wanted to. It has a bedroom and a sitting room and a kitchenette and a large, spacious bathroom. It’s decorated modern, like the rest of the building, and Eve runs her hands along a beautiful wood-grain table as they wander into the room. 

“This is a pretty nice setup,” she comments.

“Mm,” Villanelle hums. She is already wandering into the bedroom. Eve follows her.

“Nice bed, too.”

“Mhmm.” 

Villanelle crosses the bedroom and drops her backpack off on the floor next to the far wall. Floor-to-ceiling windows look out onto the empty street below. Villanelle pulls the sheer curtains across them, leaving the heavier ones for later. 

Eve senses a melancholia to her now, something not present at the restaurant. She tries to gauge the emotions that seem palpable in the room. Villanelle is a kaleidoscope, and Eve can’t seem to get a good glimpse of the colours and shapes before they are rotated away again.

“What are we doing here, Eve?” Villanelle asks suddenly. 

Eve drops her own duffel bag down by the bed. She can't say she’s really surprised. This conversation had to happen eventually. “I’m not really sure,” she admits. 

“But you’re not worried?” Villanelle turns to face her. 

“No… not really.”

“No, or not really?”

“No,” Eve replies with more certainty this time. “Are you worried?”

Villanelle seems to mull it over. “I am… tch,” she clicks her tongue in frustration. “This town is small.”

“Yes. Does that bother you?”

Villanelle frowns, tries again. “I just don’t know what happens next. Normally, that would not bother me but, now, with…” she trails off and then waves a hand between them as if to say ‘with _this’._

Eve doesn’t know if they are a ‘ _this’_. She decides to tackle one thing at a time. 

She walks across the room, watches Villanelle watch her move, until she is standing in front of her and looks up at her gently. “Next I suppose we go whale watching.”

“Are you serious?”

“Oh, absolutely.”

“But… the outfits…” Villanelle is referring to the gear they’d seen advertised on the poster; big baggy pants and long jackets. All waterproof for sailing on the open water. Eve supposes Villanelle wouldn’t want to be caught dead in something like that. It makes her grin. 

“You’ll be fine.”

“Hm. And the rest of it?”

She is referring to them, and the Twelve, and the fact that this little holiday probably can’t be a permanent thing. 

Eve doesn’t know what comes next either but she puts on a gentle smile and says, “For the rest, we’ll just take it one day at a time.”

* * *

They wake up tangled together again. Eve had never expected it to feel so nice, or to be so easy. 

They haven’t talked about _things_ , really, between them, aside from the decision to leave London together, and the short conversation the night before. She’d refused to talk about the bus at dinner the night before. She supposes she’ll have to confront her own emotions eventually, but the reality is that it’s just not really her style.

Is it anyone’s?

But the growing truth of it is that Eve can’t really deny it any longer. She and Villanelle exist in the same space now and it makes it hard to avoid, hard to ignore all the ways she _feels_ around her.

She wakes up pressed into Villanelle’s neck. She breathes deeply before she registers what she’s doing. Villanelle smells good, like earth and perfume. Eve is warm, in her heart, and content. 

Fuck, she’s so content.

A feeling, not an emotion but a physical touch, draws her out of her introspection. It is Villanelle. She is tracing her fingers along the small of Eve’s back, where her shirt has ridden up and the skin lays exposed to the dim light of the room.

The sun shines outside, but it is dark inside with the thick curtains drawn. 

Eve feels fingertips tracing slow circles around the dip of her spine. She wonders if Villanelle knows that she is awake. She worries that if she moves, the other woman will stop.

Something about it seems like it should be wrong. Inappropriate. But Eve doesn’t feel it. She sighs into Villanelle, breathing warm air against the place where her neck meets her shoulder.

Villanelle must know that Eve is awake because she breaks the silence a few moments later. “I like you like this.”

Eve doesn’t lift her head to look at her. She is far too comfortable. “Like what?” she murmurs into her neck.

“Like you are with me.”

Eve frowns a little. “I am with you.”

“No,” Villanelle says matter-of-factly. “Like you are _with_ me.”

Eve lifts her head, then, until she can look into the eyes of the woman beside her. “I _am_ with you.”

Villanelle’s forehead creases a little, as though she might argue, but she doesn’t. Instead, her gaze drops to Eve’s lips, and Eve feels herself inhale shakily at the sight of it. But she doesn’t feel like moving away. Not at all. She is drawn in, and she hovers so close to Villanelle she has a fleeting worry that she might have bad morning breath. Villanelle doesn’t move. She just watches Eve, watches her lips, and waits.

Eve hesitates.

The alarm on her phone goes off. 

The spell is broken, and Villanelle groans animatedly. “You set an _alarm_?”

Eve feels her face getting flushed. She’d forgotten about the alarm. She can’t forget the way the younger woman had been looking at her, though, mere moments ago. She bites her lip. “I didn’t want us to miss the tour.”

Villanelle rolls her eyes and then rolls away. Eve laments the loss immediately. “It isn’t until 11, Eve.”

“Well. We’re up now.” Eve turns away in the hopes that Villanelle won’t see her blush. She tries not to imagine what she’d been seconds away from doing. 

She is unsuccessful, and the unbidden image of pressing her lips to Villanelle’s haunts her as she crawls from the bed.

* * *

The sun is shining through broken clouds as they wander along the harbourfront. They are looking for pier #5, where their whale watching boat will be docked. 

“I’ve never done this before,” Villanelle says as they walk. 

“It’ll be fun,” Eve assures her. 

“You’ve done this then?” When Eve nods, Villanelle turns to look at her. “With your husband?” Eve thinks she’s trying to hold back a grimace. 

“No.” Eve shakes her head. “When I was younger, actually.”

Villanelle cocks her head. “How young?”

“Maybe thirteen or fourteen? I’m not quite sure, to be honest. But it was fun.”

“Mm,” Villanelle hums. “I was in a foster home at fourteen. After the orphanage.”

“How was that?” Eve isn’t sure how else to ask it. But she’s curious. Even if their dynamic has changed, she finds that she still wants to know all there is to know about the other woman. 

Villanelle half-shrugs. “Short-lived. Only a few months. The next one was longer. I stayed there until Anna.”

Eve nods. She knows the timeline from there. “Do you miss her?”

She wishes she could take it back the moment it falls from her lips. But it’s out there, bloating the air between them. 

Villanelle scoffs, but it’s not malicious. “No. I don’t. But…,” she hesitates. “I am not the same person that I was.”

Eve lets it go at that. She snakes a hand up along Villanelle’s arm until she has it wrapped around her bicep. She feels like she is a lover. It’s silly. Still, she leans her head on Villanelle’s shoulder and murmurs, “I know.”

It is quiet for a moment, and Eve tries her best to keep her head rested while they walk. It isn’t exactly comfortable, physically, but it soothes something inside her, and she doesn’t want to let it go. 

She thinks she can hear a smile in Villanelle’s voice when the blonde says, “There it is,” and points to the pier marked #5.

* * *

Eve is glad for the waterproof gear. The wind is stronger out on the bay and waves have begun to chop against the side of their large boat. Eve thinks Villanelle is glad for it too, standing as she is, flush against the railing, even though she knows the younger woman would never admit it.

The boat is hardly busy. Aside from them there are a handful of other tourists who have come to look for whales. A peppy young tour guide stands at the bow, ready to shout facts at them as they begin to leave the harbour. Everyone is dressed in the funny looking gear. Villanelle’s eyes are scanning the water beneath them.

Eve walks up behind her. “Are you alright?”

“Yes, just looking.”

“I don’t think the whales will be there yet,” Eve teases.

Villanelle turns from the railing to give her a withering stare. “You are so rude sometimes.”

“You like me, though,” Eve smirks. She doesn’t know why she says it. That seems to be happening a lot. 

Villanelle’s lips quirk like she is trying not to smile. She settles for wrinkling her nose instead. “Hmph. So far there are no whales, Eve. This is very boring.”

The enthusiastic tour guide chooses that moment to project her voice across the deck of the boat. “Good morning everyone!”

Villanelle rolls her eyes and mimes sticking her finger down her throat at Eve. Eve smiles but smacks her on the arm anyways. 

The guide begins by telling them a bit about Húsavík, Shaky Bay, and the whaling industry of Iceland. This is all just to kill time while they sail further out into the open water. Eve watches Villanelle lose interest in the speech rather quickly. She stares back into the water, or out at the mountains across the bay. Eve shakes her head in amusement.

Eventually, they go from a cruising speed to a slow crawl through the water, and the rest of the tourists flock to the railings in the hopes of catching a sight of something interesting. 

“If you look to the port, or left side of the ship, you’ll see a humpback nearing the surface.”

Villanelle is already there, looking over the edge, and Eve thinks she hasn’t seen anything better than Villanelle's face as a massive humpback whale crests alongside the boat. It arcs through the water below Villanelle’s view, and Eve is probably foolish for watching the woman more than the whale, but she can’t help it. Villanelle’s mouth curls into a small, nearly childlike smile, and Eve’s chest floods with affection and a little bit of pride, too. It was her idea, after all, to get out on the water.

One whale turns to two turns to three, and eventually, they are seeing humpbacks regularly around them. They are lucky, the tour guide says, because it is still early in the season. They find two large males out on their own, and then a mother and her calf swimming side by side. Villanelle watches with rapt attention as those two pass lazily alongside the ship.

“Mother humpback whales will stay with their calf for at least one year,” the tour guide is saying, although Eve thinks Villanelle tuned her out a long time ago.

“One year, hmm?” Villanelle whispers at the water. Eve hears only by virtue of standing next to her. “You are very lucky, little one, to have a mother who loves you so.”

Eve frowns. She wants to ask. She almost does, but then she feels Villanelle reach for her hand along the railing. She folds her fingers over Eve’s, and if she didn’t know better, Eve could almost imagine it was a silent promise of ‘not yet, but soon.’

_Soon, I will tell you._

Eve lets her questions die out on her tongue. 

* * *

Their ship is heading back to the harbour, and they stand side by side at the railing, facing out onto the open water around them as it cruises along. Villanelle's eyes are closed and she wears a small smile that speaks volumes. The wind whips at her and the baby hairs that couldn’t reach into her low bun are fluttering around her face. Eve has never seen her look so blissful. So...

“You look carefree.”

Villanelle opens her eyes and turns to look at Eve. She looks calm and happy and fulfilled, somehow. Eve has been rendered speechless by Villanelle’s looks before. This look leaves them all behind.

“Thank you for this.”

Eve almost answers right away. Something trivial and anticlimactic like, ‘Don’t mention it.’ Villanelle beats her to it.

“And thank you for staying.”

_Thank you for turning around._

Eve thinks she understands now.

_Thank you for choosing me._

She understands but she can’t think of the right words to say. Villanelle’s eyes linger on her as she waits for a response. Eve acts on instinct like she has so many times before. Like she did when she drove a knife into the same woman’s stomach. 

Her instincts have gotten better, with time, she thinks. 

Eve pushes up from the railing and kisses her. It’s gentle and soft and reminiscent of the bus except that this time Eve closes her eyes. She closes them and lets her hand reach up to trace along Villanelle’s neck until her fingers meet the base of her skull and she anchors them there. Anchors them together.

Something inside Eve releases. Not in a rush or a flood but in a sigh of relief. Of _finally_.

Villanelle lets herself be kissed, and if she’s surprised, she doesn’t act it. She wraps an arm around Eve’s waist and holds her tight without adding pressure. Eve doesn’t know if she’s closed her eyes too, but the way she feels relaxed against her makes her hope that she has. That she feels safe. Eve pulls back regretfully, even though it was exactly the right kind of kiss for them, in this moment.

She opens her eyes and looks up at Villanelle. Villanelle’s eyes are closed and Eve smiles in satisfaction. The blonde opens her eyes slowly and looks down at Eve, and Eve thinks about that lost look in her eyes she’d seen so long ago. She doesn’t see it now. What she sees instead is-

“Oh, look at that, Harold.” 

A woman’s voice speaks in an affectionate tone nearby. It catches Eve’s attention even as she looks up at Villanelle.

“Look at those two. Oh honey, you remember when we were on our honeymoon? We were in a world of our own too, back then...” The voice fades out as an older woman walks by with her husband, speaking in a hushed voice about the two women pressed along the railing. About them.

Eve blushes. Villanelle smiles, and it is borderline cocky but Eve can’t bring herself to be annoyed by it. Instead, she tilts her head and rests it against Villanelle’s chest. The heavy waterproof material crinkles under the pressure. 

“You look really good in your outfit,” Eve murmurs, just to be a nuisance.

“I am going to throw you overboard.” The words could be harsh, but Villanelle's voice is thick with affection, so Eve doesn’t mind them at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi im obsessed with remote locations. sorry about the gigantic dick.


	2. Rapport

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the wait fam. the chapter is longer than i planned so hopefully that makes up for the delay. here it is, part 2. sorry for any errors, i literally edited this shit and then my internet crashed before it saved and i don't have the fortitude to edit 12k all over again rn.
> 
> p.s. y'all really went buck wild for harold <3 thank you for all the love and support

They step off of the whale watching ship and back onto pier #5. Only two hours have passed but to Eve it feels like days. They are in a new place, now, after all. She smiles and looks over at Villanelle. 

She’s in jeans, her Nikes, and an oversized maroon corduroy jacket. The jacket, in particular, is so incredibly _not_ Villanelle that Eve had done a double-take earlier that morning when she’d first shrugged it on. She almost does it again, seeing it after they’ve shed the oppressive gear from the tour. Instead, she smiles at the memory of Villanelle buying it in Reykjavik, in a basement thrift shop that had reeked of mothballs. 

This is so entirely not what Eve had imagined running away with her would be like. She likes that though. She likes that a lot.

“Did you enjoy it?”

Villanelle hovers next to her, staring back out at the bay. “Yes.” She looks at Eve. “Very much.”

“Mm, me too,” Eve hums.

“I would like to go again.”

Eve laughs at that. “I’m sure that can be arranged. We have a few days to fill. You won’t complain about the outfits again?”

Villanelle deadpans. “They were really bad outfits, Eve.” Then, she gets a mischievous look in her eyes and says, “They did not allow me to appreciate your body."

Eve wants to roll her eyes. Or bark a laugh. But she just kissed Villanelle not twenty minutes ago, so her hormones are a little… well. She settles for a small shake of her head. “You are... “

“Funny, charming, irresistible?”

“I was going to say ‘an ass’.”

“Hmm,” Villanelle hums absently. She’s looking at Eve’s lips.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Eve lets it go. “Okay. Come on, where to next? There’s a whale museum over there-” Eve points to a small building in the harbour. “-And we should probably get groceries or something today.”

Villanelle looks thoughtful. “Let’s get groceries. Whale museum tomorrow.”

“Okay.” 

Eve begins to turn away from her and walk down the pier. She feels Villanelle grab her hand before she’s taken two steps and pull her back around. Before Eve can ask what’s wrong, Villanelle pulls her in and kisses her, hard, for the whole pier to see.

If Eve could form a coherent thought, she’d wonder if Harold and his wife were still around.

Villanelle pulls back after a cruelly short moment. Eve is left rather breathless. She inhales shakily and watches Villanelle’s eyes as they linger on her lips before lifting to meet her gaze. “So, I just do that anytime I want now?”

“What?” Eve is still dazed.

“Kiss you,” Villanelle explains, even though she really shouldn’t have to. “I can just- whenever?”

“Oh.” It comes out as an airy kind of sigh more than anything. “Y-yes.” Eve vaguely wonders why she’s having so much trouble. She was the one who had kissed Villanelle first, on the bus and on the boat. 

She supposes it’s because it’s a different thing entirely to be pulled into a kiss like that. To be unabashedly wanted by someone. She knew Villanelle had felt that way about her, once, but to see it on display like this, since the bridge is… well, _nice_ just doesn’t seem a good enough way to describe it.

She’s still catching her breath as Villanelle turns and begins to walk away. Their hands are still intertwined, however, and Eve is gently dragged along as she forces her lungs to work properly and her heart to settle down. She doesn’t try too hard though. The feeling of being wanted is entirely too enjoyable.

* * *

Grocery shopping in Husavik is a foreign experience to Eve, but probably a rather mundane one to Villanelle, Eve supposes, since she’s been shopping in a handful of different countries over her lifetime. The small supermarket is called Nettó and it looks like any other supermarket, really. There are aisles and fluorescent lights and white tiled floors. Food labels are a mystery to Eve, although most things she can tell just by looking; peanut butter, bread, cheese. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out, although it is fun to see the Icelandic names; all unfamiliar lettering and incomprehensible sounds, to her.

They gather up a few groceries for the next couple of days. The apartment does have a kitchenette, after all, and it would make sense to make use of it. Of course, it is not a full kitchen, and so they are limited to a stove, a microwave, a fridge, and a kettle. Still, that is enough for most things, and it isn’t too hard to shop accordingly. 

That is, of course, until they come to the candy aisle. Eve can tell it is the candy aisle because everything is bright and meant to attract children. It attracts Villanelle, too, and Eve should shake her head but she can’t find the disdain. She laughs instead, her arms full of groceries.

“What are you doing?”

Villanelle spares her a quick glance before she eyes the shelves again. “I would like to try some Icelandic candy. Don’t you want any candy, Eve?”

Eve humours her and walks towards her down the aisle until she stands next to the woman and faces the shelves of assaulting, coloured packages. “Which one do you want?”

“Shh, I am thinking.”

Eve rolls her eyes. They stand in silence for a few moments longer until Villanelle reaches forwards and plucks a bag off the shelf. It is bright yellow and the candies inside look like something gummy; soft and chewy and liable to be stuck in her teeth for days. Eve eyes the bag dubiously. She is glad they bought Villanelle her own toothbrush. “Ready to go?”

Villanelle seems to hesitate, and then,

“I am sorry about Rome.”

Eve turns to look at her. Villanelle is staring at the bag in her hands. “Why are you bringing this up now?” Eve asks it gently. She’s not upset, just surprised.

“That is what you are supposed to do with… _partners_ -”

It’s not lost on Eve the way that Villanelle stumbles and tries to find the right word to describe them.

“-You are supposed to discuss issues openly and communicate, not let things be bottled up.”

Eve cocks her head. “It’s not bottled up.”

“It’s not?” Villanelle finally looks away from the bag in her hand and over at Eve. She looks wary, but hopeful, like a child expecting punishment and receiving indifference instead.

Eve shrugs. “No, it’s not. I… well. I can’t act like I have some sort of moral high ground, can I? I almost killed Dasha. I would’ve, I think. And you weren’t there to force me to do that. So…,” Eve trails off awkwardly. 

Villanelle furrows her brow. “I was not referring to Raymond. I was referring to shooting you.”

“Oh."

“Did you forget that I shot you, Eve?”

Eve frowns. “No. I don’t think I could forget that.” It sounds feeble even to her own ears. The fact of the matter is that she _had_ forgotten about the gunshot wound in her shoulder, for the first time in months. She had forgotten who had given it to her. It’s startling, to say the least.

And then it is… comforting?

Eve takes a step closer and plucks the yellow bag of candy from Villanelle’s hands. “I’ll be taking these, and then we’ll call it even.”

For a moment, VIllanelle seems confused that it could be that easy, navigating their past and its issues, but then she lets go and lets out a small laugh. “I am letting you have them. You know I could take them back if I wanted to.”

Eve rolls her eyes but otherwise doesn’t comment. They both know that Villanelle is right. 

As they finish their grocery shopping, Eve thinks of the conversation in the candy aisle. _Conversation_ might not be the right word; it was too short, too inconclusive, but that was Eve’s doing, really. She hadn’t seen the need to delve into those issues, into the issue of Rome. At least, not in the candy aisle of the Nettó. 

Truthfully, it was a fading memory, Villanelle pulling that trigger. Maybe that was a foolish thing to forget, but she can hardly control it now. They are making new memories, sharing experiences that heal rather than harm.

They go through the checkout with a cashier that doesn’t speak a word of English. She nods politely at them and smiles but otherwise scans items in silence. When the total comes up, Villanelle pays in cash while Eve grabs their bags. They walk out of the supermarket and into a sunny afternoon. Daylight has broken through the clouds while they were shopping. Eve turns her head to the sky and smiles, feeling the warmth on her face, while Villanelle turns her head to look at her.

“You look like a crazy person.”

“I’d have to be crazy to be with you,” Eve replies, eyes still closed and not missing a beat.

She feels a smack on her arm a second later. “Hey!” She opens her eyes and glares at Villanelle. “I can’t smack you back when I’m carrying all the bags!”

“I know,” Villanelle smiles mischievously. “You can’t do much of anything, except…” 

She steps into Eve’s space and curls her fingers around Eve’s jaw. She tilts her chin up and kisses her gently, but insistently, outside the entryway of the Nettó. Eve closes her eyes and imagines locals sidestepping them as they grumble about tourists. When Villanelle pulls back, Eve opens her eyes dazedly.

“Well,” Villanelle hums. “I guess you can do that.”

“Ass.” Eve breathes the word against her lips. It doesn’t come out threateningly at all. Villanelle smirks before turning away and beginning to walk towards the main road. 

“Hey!” Eve calls. “Aren’t you going to help me with these?” She holds up the grocery bags weakly.

“Nope,” Villanelle calls back, popping the ‘p’ as she does so. “I would not be a very good ass if I did that.”

Eve stands there speechless for a moment, then she huffs and begins stalking after the younger woman. New memories, she tells herself, new memories. But maybe one little knick with a knife wound wouldn’t hurt.

As she catches up to Villanelle, she sees her laughing in the sunlight, and she decides that she’ll settle for a well-placed pinch, instead.

Because _progress._

* * *

They drop their groceries back at the apartment and head out into town to find a late lunch. It’s a small town though, after all, and they are drawn to the harbour and the ocean and the memories of their morning spent whale watching. They wind up at the same restaurant as they had the previous day. This time Eve orders a burger and Villanelle orders fish and chips. Eve smiles sheepishly at Villanelle and Villanelle grins toothily at her in return.

“So.”

“So.”

It is a repeat performance of the evening before, only with less tension, fewer obstacles, and the glaring fact that they have made progress, somehow, in the past 24 hours. Villanelle takes the lead.

“Dasha.” She phrases it like a statement but then looks to Eve like she is waiting for an answer.

“What about her?” Eve asks, feigning ignorance just for the sake of it.

“You almost killed her, hm?”

Eve frowns and looks down at her plate. “Yeah, I did. I just… really wanted to, in that moment, you know? It was getting away from me, that urge to just keep crushing her with my foot. To push a little harder, maybe hear something crack.”

Villanelle watches her with interest and understanding. She leans across the table, picks a fry off of Eve’s plate, and pops it into her mouth. “Did you watch her eyes?”

“Huh?” Eve had been lost in thought remembering, _reminiscing_ that day in the woods.

“Did you watch her eyes?” Villanelle repeats patiently. “Their eyes as they go… it’s…” There is a beat of silence before she ends with, “...eerie.”

Eve cocks her head and feels curiosity bloom. There’s something to uncover here in the way Villanelle fixates on the eyes, in the way she watches life leave a body. And yet, Eve doesn’t feel the same drive as she’d once felt, the same incessant need to dig for answers. She is sitting in a small restaurant in Iceland with a reformed killer-for-hire that she might wind up wanting a life with someday, if they continue on like this.

And isn’t that thought enough to wrench her mind away from the conversation at hand. Her brain almost takes her down a rabbit hole of frantic rationalizations, until she feels Villanelle’s hand cover hers and she is brought back to the moment.

“You did not kill her though. Why not?”

“I was interrupted.”

“Would you have done it if you had not been interrupted?”

“I’m… not sure,” Eve replies, and it is the honest truth. She doesn’t know what would have happened if she’d had just a few more minutes alone with Dasha. She tries to think of it like everything else from before the night on the bridge; bygones of little importance to the life she finds herself living now.

She tries not to think about how it would have been a hell of a lot less messy than Raymond. She watches Villanelle dip a french fry into ketchup, watches red slime ooze down the length of it. She pushes Raymond and axes and Rome from her mind.

“Why?” Villanelle asks around her half-eaten french fry. 

“Why what?” 

“Why did you try to kill her?”

“She tried to kill Niko,” Eve answers on instinct. She goes quiet after that, and Villanelle’s eyes move slowly from Eve down to her plate. She looks at her fish as if it is a week old; displeased. Eve can’t help but keep talking. “She said you were a killing machine. That it was all you know. She said… she broke your back?”

Villanelle shrugs. “A turn of phrase, as you say.”

“But grounded in truth.”

Villanelle’s eyes find Eve’s from across the table. “Some truth, maybe. Dasha trained me,” she explains. “She trained me and she made me.”

“I think her exact words were that she took raw shit and moulded it-”

“Moulded it, yes, yes.” Villanelle waves a hand dismissively. “I’ve heard her say it. ‘ _Moulded it into steel_ ’. But she moulded nothing.” The younger woman leans across the table and regards Eve heavily. “Dasha likes to think of herself as a sculptor, yes? Hands that take a malleable thing and shape it into some form. But she is not this.” Villanelle's face contorts in disgust. “She is like… a blacksmith. She takes a lump of stone and forces it, through fire and water and sheer will, into whatever shape she wants. She beats and she beats and-” 

Villanelle cuts off abruptly as their server comes by to refill their water. When he leaves, she continues, “Dasha is the hammer, Eve, and the threat of exile is the anvil. Children are the shit that turns to ‘steel’.” She air-quotes the final word.

Eve sits across from her, equal parts horrified and fascinated. She isn’t sure what to say; she’s quickly learning that words are not her forte. She flips her hand and squeezes Villanelle’s palm, still folded over her own, and, for lack of anything better, she says, “So I should have killed her when I had the chance?”

Villanelle snorts. “Maybe. But I am not worried, Eve. I have a very strong feeling that she is already dead.”

And then she picks another fry off of Eve’s plate, utterly unbothered by the prospect.

* * *

It is several hours later, well into the evening, when Eve remembers her errant thought from lunch. They are in the apartment, Eve sitting on the couch and Villanelle hovering around the kitchen like she might start cooking at any moment, or maybe she just enjoys it there. Eve has a book in her lap, something left behind by a previous guest, but she hasn’t read much of it at all. It is old and faded and about a man and the sea. She is watching Villanelle instead, watching her back, when she remembers the thought.

That she might want a life with this woman, someday. 

It was fleeting, nothing more, and Eve refuses to dwell on it too much, but then she watches Villanelle float around their rented apartment, watches her pull out a cutting board and some pots and a knife from a drawer.

Domesticity never looked so good. Eve feels the need to do something about it. 

She pushes off the couch and pads softly over to Villanelle, her feet hardly making noise as she crosses the floor, dressed in warm socks she’d bought from a shop in town. Villanelle, for all her prowess as an assassin, doesn’t hear her approach until Eve has practically reached her. Before she can turn around, Eve weaves her arms around the taller woman’s waist and links her hands across her stomach.

“Hi,” she whispers, her face pressed into the back of Villanelle’s shirt.

“Hello, Eve.” Eve likes to think she can hear soft tones of adoration in her voice. “You know I am going to start making dinner soon?”

“Mmm,” Eve hums into her back. “This is nice.”

“Really? You pressed into my back?” Villanelle scoffs a bit, but not maliciously.

“Reminds me of dancing.”

“Strange dance,” Villanelle replies, her Russian accent curling hard on the consonants of the words. It makes Eve smile.

“You look good,” she tells her. 

Villanelle chuckles. “I did not quit being an assassin to become your personal chef, you know. Even if I would be fabulous at it.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Too bad.” Eve hangs on a moment longer, tries not to imagine a world where this is her every day, and then she lets go. “Can I help with anything?”

Villanelle shakes her head, still facing the counter. “I can manage.”

Eve raises an eyebrow and sidles up next to her. “Are you sure you aren’t my personal chef?”

“Yes. I would not want to work for you, Eve. But…” Villanelle turns her head and looks at her slyly. “Your housewife, maybe?”

Eve laughs hard and loud. “You? A housewife?.” She turns to get some vegetables from the fridge. She hopes Villanelle can’t see the way her hand shakes as she pulls at the handle. “I can’t see it.”

She can’t see Villanelle as a housewife at all. It is completely incongruent with her entire being. Villanelle hovering around their shared kitchen, however, making coffee and food and berating Eve for her own terrible cooking… that Eve can see. In glaring detail. Blinding like the midnight sun that’s going to shine into their bedroom later that night. _Their_ bedroom.

Domesticity has never looked so good, but it’s never been so intangible either. Their vacation is only temporary, after all.

* * *

It is nearing midnight when Villanelle decides that she is finally ready to talk about Gryzmet. Or, about some of it.

It catches Eve by surprise, when they’ve both crawled into their shared bed and lay respectfully on their backs, a foot or two apart. It’s not that Eve doesn’t want to kiss her, they’ve certainly taken full advantage of their new dynamic in the past 12 hours, but something about the air between them feels different. Eve wonders if it is the bed. The inherent intimacy of it. And then Villanelle rolls on her side to face her.

“I killed my mother.”

Eve stares at the ceiling. “She probably had it coming.” Villanelle snorts lightly beside her and Eve turns her head at the sound. “Did she?”

“I do not kill anyone who doesn’t have it coming.”

Eve arches an eyebrow. “What about Bill?”

Villanelle frowns. “I _am_ sorry about him.”

Eve holds the other woman’s gaze for a few moments before she sighs heavily. “I know you are. So, tell me about your mother.”

“What do you want to know?”

It catches Eve off guard, the openness, the willingness to just dive right into it, but maybe Villanelle is convinced of Eve’s loyalty after the night on the London Bridge. Maybe now there will be no holds barred between them.

“What did she do to you?"

Villanelle stares at her for a moment, eyes swimming with barely-concealed emotion, before she replies, “Ask something else first.”

Maybe there will still be _some_ holds barred, then.

“How did you kill her?”

Villanelle shrugs underneath the covers. “I blew up her house. Well, I killed her before that, technically, but that made sure of it.”

“You had to be certain?” Eve asks, only teasing her a little bit.

“Yes. She is…” Villanelle pauses thoughtfully. “She _was_ always sneaky. She could make everyone else think that she was so wonderful. But I knew what she was.”

“And what was she?”

“She was like me.”

It is a simple statement but it is said with such vehemence that Eve could almost shy away in surprise. Except that this is Villanelle, and Eve has never shied away from her even in the moments when she almost certainly should have. Before she can think to comment, Villanelle continues on.

“She did not kill people, but she could be…,” Eve watches as Villanelle’s eyes focus on someplace over her shoulder. She’s not really there, in the bed anymore. She’s in Gryzmet, maybe in her childhood, and Eve feels her chest tighten at the thought of what Villanelle might be remembering. “...so cruel.”

“Well-”

Villanelle cuts her off. “You know she said it was me who drove my papa away?” Eve watches as tears swim in the corners of the younger woman’s eyes. “She said it was my fault he-” She cuts off abruptly, and Eve wonders if she will ever know the end of the sentence, the fate of Villanelle’s father.

For once, she doesn’t press for more details, even as they hang so tantalizingly close. Instead, she reaches forwards and tugs on Villanelle’s shoulder, scooting towards her until she can press the younger woman’s face into her chest. “Come here."

Villanelle doesn’t resist her, rolling forwards and nestling into the space between Eve’s neck and shoulder. “I had to kill her.”

“I know,” Eve reassures her softly. She does, and she doesn’t, at the same time. But it’s okay to not know everything in full. She knows enough for empathy. “I know.”

“And now I don’t want to kill anyone anymore.”

Eve lets her fingers trail up Villanelle’s arm and eventually knot into her hair. “Maybe you won’t have to.”

It’s weak and flimsy but god, she means it. She means it with all her heart and she wills it into existence. For her part, Villanelle doesn’t scoff at Eve’s attempt to soothe her. She just lets herself be touched and comforted and held close, and when Eve feels a drop of something hit the skin above her collarbones, she doesn’t comment. It is followed by another, and then another, and Villanelle is very good at controlling her body and her breathing but eventually, a small sob shakes through. Eve doesn’t comment on that either. She just holds her tighter and makes a silent promise to hunt down all the people who’ve hurt Villanelle the most.

It is silly and impractical but it makes her feel good. It makes her feel even better when she remembers that at least two of those people are already dead.

Villanelle stills after a short time but she doesn’t say anything more. Eve accepts that silence, choosing instead to keep running her fingers through Villanelle’s hair. Eventually, Eve feels the slow tempo of the younger woman’s breathing and she knows she’s drifted off to sleep. Eve smiles before pressing her lips to Villanelle’s head in a soft kiss goodnight, then she lets her fall back against the pillows and waits to fall asleep.

* * *

Something about the next morning is different. Eve isn’t sure why, but the first clue is immediate. She wakes up and feels it instantly: Villanelle is gone from their bed.

She throws the covers aside and pushes hurriedly off of the mattress. She hardly cares that her shorts have ridden uncomfortably high up her ass, or that her hair is an unkempt disaster, flowing in curls and knots as she looks around the bedroom. The door to the ensuite bathroom is open, the light inside turned off. Eve feels panic flutter in her throat like butterflies trying to escape. 

She dashes to the door and flings it open, bursting out into the open space of the living room and kitchenette. Villanelle is there, watching her, a mug of something steaming in her hands. Behind her, something cooks in a pan on the stovetop. Eve realizes then that she is out of breath and panting, even if she hasn’t travelled very far.

“Good morning, Eve,” Villanelle greets her, coy and maybe a little amused.

Eve’s adrenaline is wearing off as her brain remembers that she’d been asleep only minutes ago. Her thoughts are jumbled.

“I thought you’d gone,” she offers. It’s an attempted explanation for barrelling through the doorway.

“Hmm-” Villanelle sips from her mug, utterly unfazed. “I’m still here. You can come and poke me if you want.”

The second hint that something is not quite right comes as she catches a whiff of Villanelle’s coffee.

“Is there alcohol in that?”

“There may be some, yes.”

Eve narrows her eyes. “Why?”

Villanelle shrugs. “It’s to, how you say, ‘take the edge off’.”

“Why take the edge off?

Villanelle shrugs again and takes another sip. This is getting them nowhere so Eve steps closer to the other woman and tries a different approach. She lays her hand gently on Villanelle’s arm.

“Are you alright?”

Oh, how those words have changed her life. Spoken aloud in a hospital bathroom to a complete stranger. A stranger she’d unknowingly been hunting. A woman she’d been pursuing. Now, what was she to Eve?

She was… longing and memory and pain. Desire, lust, fascination. Obsession. Affection and admiration. Villanelle stirred all these things within Eve, cramming and colliding until they would reach a critical mass. No longer able to coalesce, those feelings would have no choice but to erupt out of her somehow. Eve shook her head to herself.

They were just words, just a question asked to someone she cared about. The history was…

Who was Eve kidding? Their history was everything.

“I’m alright, Eve.”

Villanelle’s voice, tight and restrained, brought Eve out of her thoughts. “I can tell you’re lying, you know.”

“I’m not lying.”

“Bull _shit._ ”

History repeats and Eve could almost laugh. It’s not lost on her, in that moment, how far they’ve come since sitting at her old kitchen table with a container of leftover shepherd’s pie between them.

Villanelle shakes her head to herself and sighs. “It’s really nothing, Eve. Just a dream.”

Eve permits herself a small smile. Now they’re getting somewhere. She tugs on Villanelle’s arm so that the younger woman holds her mug in one hand as she’s forced to turn towards Eve.

“Come on,” Eve pleads with her gently. “Talk to me.”

“It was just-” Villanelle grimaces at the memory, “-unpleasant.”

“It was about your mother?” Eve guesses. 

Villanelle shakes her head ‘no’ but doesn’t provide any other details so Eve continues on. “Your father?”

More head-shaking.

“Dasha? Konstantin? Anna?”

Villanelle deadpans to Eve and Eve tries not to let out a heavy sigh of exasperation. “I don’t know what it means when you just look at me like that.”

Villanelle relents, lets out a heavy sigh of her own, and confesses, “It was about you, Eve.”

_Oh._

It’s interesting. It’s egotistically intoxicating. Eve shoves the self-absorbed part of herself down with the other repressed feelings of the morning. “What was the dream?”

Villanelle grimaces again, the features of her face twisting in discomfort. “Us, at the bridge. You did not turn around.” She slides her gaze to meet Eve’s and there is something childlike about it; lost, in need of reassurance. She continues, “At first, I thought maybe you just needed more time. But no, you started walking and kept walking and when I called your name you still did not turn to face me.”

Eve keeps their eyes locked. “I’m sorry.” 

“It doesn’t matter-”

“It does. It matters. But I’m not going to walk away from you.” Eve pauses and tries to flash a small smile. “I don’t think I can, really.”

Villanelle regards her for a moment before she asks, “And you are okay with that? The inability to walk away from me?”

Eve nods. “Yes,” she breathes, and it comes out like a sigh of relief. Of admission. Of- _oh._ She isn’t ready to admit it, but there is something there, and it makes her next breath shallow, her heartbeat quicken.

She faintly remembers something cooking on the stovetop. She thinks it is bacon. It will probably burn. 

She leans up and kisses Villanelle. She lets her lips linger, waiting, until Villanelle moves against her, sweeping her into her arms slowly, pressing them closer together. It is gentle, not rough, and vulnerable, not demanding. Eve feels hands run along her back until they come up to rest in her hair. Villanelle’s lips pull away from hers and she feels a shaky breath leave them.

Eve wonders if Villanelle is feeling that same something, that same _‘oh’_ of admission that neither of them speaks into existence.

“Can I-” Villanelle starts.

“Yes.” Eve breathes it against the other woman’s’ lips. She doesn’t even know what Villanelle is planning to say. She doesn’t care.

Villanelle accepts the permission given. She brings her lips back against Eve’s and lets one hand trail down to her waist. The other hand knots in Eve’s hair and holds tight, and Eve couldn’t move away even if she tried. 

That is the theme of them; always brought together, neither having the will to truly pull apart. But now Eve can yield to the pull of them. She can cave to the magnetism.

And oh, how she caves.

She kisses Villanelle with a fire stoked by the events of the night and the morning. Their talk about Villanelle’s mother and father, her nightmare. Eve feels a desire to lick at Villanelle’s wounds. She parts her lips and tries.

At the feel of Eve’s tongue against hers, Villanelle sighs into her mouth and spins her slightly, pushing her back up against the marble counter and kissing her with a growing hunger. Eve feels the small of her back bump against the stone countertop. She thinks of her back pressed against the sink of her old house, a knife held to her breast. 

Their history is everything. It makes these moments that much sweeter. Progress, Eve thinks, and something more.

Villanelle’s hand moves from Eve’s hair and down along her neck, her shoulder, until she palms at Eve’s chest. Eve feels her thumb brush over her nipple, over the fabric of her pyjama shirt. It’s just enough pressure to make her head spin. Villanelle bites at her lip, softly, pulling it, and Eve thinks her legs might turn to jelly.

Maybe Villanelle has the same thought. She reaches both hands behind Eve’s thighs and lifts her up onto the countertop, and Eve is breathless even though she isn’t the one doing the hard work.

It is an instinctual thing, then, the way she wraps her legs around Villanelle’s hips and anchors them together. For her part, Villanelle responds by grabbing gently at Eve’s chin and tilting her head to the side so she can kiss along her jaw and neck. Eve hears her own breath coming out in ragged gasps, like the fits and spurts of a volcano as it builds to an eruption.

Like a spark igniting gunpowder, the shallowness of Eve’s breathing does something to Villanelle, and she kisses with a fierce kind of need that has Eve panting. She tilts her head back, taking a moment to breathe, and Villanelle takes the opportunity to run her mouth along Eve’s neck. It is a trail of kisses and bites and soft curls of her tongue, and Eve is on fire with the heat of it. She is hot, she is burning, she is-

There’s smoke coming from the stovetop, and Eve smells it first.

“Fuck, Villanelle, the stove-”

It is distinctly not sexy. Villanelle huffs against her neck and pulls away, untangling herself from Eve’s legs. Turning in one swift motion, she grabs the handle of the pan. Its contents, once bacon but now something approaching charcoal, are unceremoniously flung into the garbage bin under the sink. Villanelle tosses the pan back onto the stove and turns back to Eve.

“A little fire would not have killed you,” she deadpans as she moves closer to Eve once more. This time, she is less vulnerable than before. She no longer needs whiskeyed coffee to chase away her nightmares. She has Eve.

“Somehow I don’t think the managers would like it if we burned the place down.” Eve says it sarcastically, but Villanelle is encroaching slowly into her personal space, smiling at her like she is in on some kind of secret, and Eve’s heart beats a rapid staccato in her chest. She feels the same heat from before, permeating her body, resonating between her thighs. She wonders if Villanelle can feel the heat coming off of her. She wonders if Villanelle is burning, too. 

She watches the curve of Villanelle’s lips as the woman weaves herself back into the space between her thighs. Eve’s breath hitches as Villanelle presses her body into her, and she feels the inferno inside her grow hotter when Villanelle asks, “Would you like to go back to bed, Eve?”

Eve nods like she’s in a trance, her eyes focused on Villanelle’s mouth as she learns forwards, expecting another kiss. Instead, Villanelle wraps her arms around Eve and lifts her off the counter.

“Oh,” Eve breathes, her arms wrapping around Villanelle’s shoulders instinctually. She presses her face into the crook of Villanelle’s neck and inhales deeply. “You smell nice.”

Villanelle hums as she carries Eve towards the bedroom. “What do I smell like?”

_What do I smell of to you?_

There’s a part of Eve’s brain that finds it amusing, the cyclical nature of their relationship, if it can be called that. The universe has a wicked sense of humour, but she isn’t going to dwell on that now.

“You smell…,” Eve isn’t sure what to say, so settles for, “-you don’t smell like _La Villanelle_.” She pulls her head back and kisses Villanelle’s cheek. She feels the other woman smiling.

“I bought it for you to wear, Eve, not for me.”

They cross the threshold into the bedroom and Eve feels herself being lowered onto the bed. “It was sexy, I’ll admit.”

“Mm,” Villanelle hums, her eyes raking over Eve’s body appreciatively, no doubt enjoying the way she looks, laid out on her back expectantly. “And here I am, taking you to bed without it.”

“You don’t need it.” As she speaks, her legs automatically spread and make room for Villanelle’s body to slide between them. They may not know how to dance together, but their bodies seem to know the movements of this different kind of intimacy just fine.

“No?” Villanelle teases. She supports herself above Eve, smiling lasciviously. 

“No.” Eve reaches up and grabs a fistful of Villanelle’s shirt. “I don’t want _La Villanelle_. I only want you.” And she pulls Villanelle down to meet her.

* * *

“Why did you stop?”

Their legs are tangled together, their clothes are still all on. Eve’s hands hover just beneath the hem of Villanelle’s shirt. Her palms are touching the smooth skin of the younger woman’s stomach. Her fingers flit aimlessly like they are unsure of what to do. Her brazen confidence from a few moments ago has been doused by a sudden bout of insecurity.

“You want this, right?”

Villanelle’s eyebrows raise. “Yes. I thought that was obvious.”

Eve rolls her eyes. “I know you want sex. I know you want… me, _sexually_. I just mean, you also want…” Eve trails off.

Villanelle seems to understand. “I will still want you after sex, Eve. I will want you even more.”

Eve frowns. “How can you be sure?”

Villanelle sighs and rolls over onto her side. “So, now we are going to have a conversation instead of having mindblowing sex.”

“I just-”

“It’s okay, Eve. It is important.” Villanelle takes a hand and presses it along Eve’s cheek. Eve tilts her head to look at her. “I know I will still want you because it is you who came to me.”

Eve frowns, and she opens her mouth to speak but Villanelle beats her to it.

“You have always come to me, out of curiosity or anger or…,” she shrugs before continuing, “but on the bridge, you turned around even after there was no reason to come back to me anymore. We had said what we needed to say. You could have left, Eve, but instead you stayed, and I…” It is Villanelle’s turn to frown, and she pauses a moment before she says, “I knew I would always want you.”

It is no confession of love, and for that, Eve is thankful. Rome may be behind them, but it is not so far behind as to forget how Villanelle’s last ‘I love you’ had ended. They have come far, so far, since then, but neither of them is ready for that.

Still, Villanelle’s answer does soothe something in Eve, and she reaches her own hand to Villanelle’s cheek and whispers, “Kiss me.”

Villanelle doesn’t hesitate to obey. She kisses Eve softly at first, but it doesn’t take long before their kiss becomes deeper. Villanelle’s nails dig trenches along Eve’s hips as she pulls at the older woman hungrily. It’s a bit more forceful than Eve had anticipated, and she lets out a small squeak that Villanelle swallows up as she clambers back on top of her.

The fire Eve has felt throughout the morning threatens to ignite their entire bedroom, and Villanelle is fanning the flames with every kiss, every touch. In a few moments, their legs are tangled together again. Not long afterwards, their clothes come off. There is a moment when time hangs frozen around them, a pause in which the only movements are their eyes tracing each others’ bodies and the rise and fall of their chests as they pant heavily. Then Villanelle succumbs to the temptation of Eve, breathing her name as she leans forwards and brings their lips together once again.

From there, Villanelle kisses along Eve’s jaw, one hand holding her upright, the other tracing idly around Eve’s breasts. Eve herself is breathless, her body quivering with a want she hadn’t known she’d had. 

Sure, she’d known she’d felt a kind of desire for Villanelle. The perfume, the teddy bear, the dress. God, the bus was obvious enough in its own right. But this was something wholly new; she is naked under Villanelle’s body, and she aches with a want for more. 

More touch, more contact, more pressure. More of Villanelle’s mouth against her skin, but in other places. _Lower_ places. Eve decides to tell her as much.

“I want you to touch me,” she groans, and her hips lift in solidarity to her words, trying to find the contact she wants against Villanelle’s thigh between her legs.

“Why the rush, Eve?” Villanelle purrs in her ear. “It took us so long to get here, we should enjoy it for all that it’s worth.”

“It took us so long to get here, it’s just cruel to make me wait any longer.”

Eve feels Villanelle’s lips pull into a smile against her throat. “I had never thought I would be fucking you in Iceland.” The words are spoken against her skin, and Eve can almost feel them like a physical touch, making her want more and more.

“I never thought you’d be fucking me at all,” she replies, breathless.

“Hmm,” Villanelle hums, all ego and swagger. “But I’m sure you hoped that I would.”

“You’re an ass- _oh_.” Villanelle moves down and wraps her mouth around Eve’s breast. “Okay,” Eve breathes. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

Villanelle can’t speak but she flicks Eve’s nipple with her tongue in retaliation, and Eve lets out a moan before she can think to suppress it. The sound surprises them both, and Villanelle pulls her mouth away from Eve’s chest. She looks down at Eve and Eve shivers under her gaze.

“What?” she asks, or tries to ask, but the word gets caught in her throat.

Villanelle understands though, and she shakes her head in disbelief before saying, “It is so much better than I imagined.”

With anyone else, Eve might laugh it off, or blush, or make a sarcastic remark. But this is Villanelle hovering above her. Villanelle’s hands touching her softly, Villanelle’s mouth caressing her body. Eve takes a shaky breath.

“Show me,” she whispers. “Show me what you’ve been thinking about, all this time.”

* * *

Villanelle makes Eve come hard, her legs wrapped around the younger woman’s waist and her eyes screwed shut with the feel of it. She says a lot of things, but she doesn’t say Villanelle’s name. Either of her names. She isn’t sure which one she wants to go by, and the sex feels so personal, she doesn’t want to get it wrong.

When Eve can speak, she sighs heavily and teases, “So that’s what it’s like to have sex with a woman.”

Villanelle nips at her neck, grazing her with her teeth before she replies, “No, Eve. That is what it’s like to have sex with me.”

At that, Eve laughs. She laughs loud and ugly, but she doesn’t care. Villanelle doesn’t seem to either, as she pulls away from Eve and looks down at her, smiling. It’s insane, Eve thinks, for things to be this easy between them. For things to be so carefree. She knows it can’t last, and rather than have that ruin the moment, she lets it fuel her happiness, her spontaneity, and she flips them over clumsily.

Now on her back, Villanelle looks up at her with an amused expression and Eve bends forward to kiss her. When she pulls away, she lingers against Villanelle’s lips and whispers, “Tell me if I’m doing something wrong.”

Then she slides her hand between Villanelle’s legs and lets her fingers run along her, feeling wetness and warmth. It’s enough to take Eve’s breath away, and she gasps against Villanelle’s mouth as she continues touching. Beneath her, Villanelle is still, but Eve watches her hands fist in the sheets.

“You can touch me,” Eve tells her. Her body is still trembling from the effects of Villanelle’s touch. Selfishly, she wants more, even as she sets herself to the task of touching as much of Villanelle’s body as she can.

“I’ve already touched you. I’ve waited so long for you to touch me, I-” Villanelle is cut off by her own shaky breathing before she continues, “I just want to feel you touch me.”

Eve accepts Villanelle’s words, lets them settle in her heart and illuminate her desires. “You can still talk me through it,” she offers, her fingers dragging slowly along Villanelle’s sex.

“I don’t think you will need any help from me, Eve.” 

It’s a compliment, and Eve takes it gladly, but she says, “Still, I want to hear your voice.”

There is a beat of silence where the room is filled only with their mingled breathing, and then Eve lets her fingers start a slow rhythm around Villanelle’s clit. She feels Villanelle inhale sharply, then sigh out slowly, and amongst the escaping breath, Eve hears her name whispered softly like a prayer.

_“Eve.”_

And Eve replies gently, “I’m here.”

Villanelle takes one hand and buries it in the hair at the nape of Eve’s neck. “Tell me again.” It is pleading, not commanding, and Eve feels arousal ignite beneath her belly.

“I’m here, baby.” She leans forwards and catches Villanelle’s lips in a kiss. Villanelle moans into her mouth. Eve commits the sound to memory and does her best to draw it out again and again and again.

She takes her time letting her fingers drag lazily around Villanelle’s clit. She enjoys the way it makes the younger woman sigh and gasp and clench a fist tightly in the sheets. Eve thinks Villanelle is denying herself by refusing to touch Eve. Her hands have fallen back to the mattress. But maybe that turns her on more, and who is Eve to demand that she do otherwise. She misses the feel of Villanelle’s hands on her skin, but how can she complain when her own fingers are touching Villanelle so intimately?

It’s intoxicating, and she could do it all day, this slow, methodical tracing along the most sensitive part of the younger woman. But she wants more. She always wants more. And this time there is nothing to stop her.

Eve drags her fingers lower, and Villanelle spreads her legs wider instinctively when she feels Eve’s movement. Her breathing gets shallower, and Eve pauses to look down at her appreciatively. To watch the rise and fall of her breasts, to savour the way her mouth falls open in anticipation of Eve’s touch.

And it’s obvious to both of them what’s going to happen next, but Eve wants to hear it spoken out loud all the same.

“Do you want me to-”

“Yes.” Villanelle says it hurriedly, impatient for Eve to touch her, and Eve can’t help but savour the moment a little longer.

“Tell me what you want,” she whispers, leaning forwards so that her mouth hovers just out of Villanelle’s reach.

“Eve-’ Villanelle huffs, her hips jerking slightly as if she is trying to bring Eve’s hand where she wants it herself.

“Tell me.”

“Touch me,” she pleads. “I want you to touch me, Eve. I want you to feel me. All of me. I want-”

Eve pushes her finger inside of Villanelle and Villanelle moans loudly at the feel of it. “Like this?”

“Yes, Eve, I-” she cuts herself off with another heavy breath as Eve pulls out and pushes slowly into her again. “-I want that. More.”

“More?” Eve remembers how Villanelle had touched her, two fingers inside of her. She makes to do the same, hovering just outside of Villanelle until she hears what she’s looking for. 

“Eve, yes. More, please. I want you, I want-”

It’s not that she doesn’t want to hear what Villanelle is going to say, it’s just that Eve can’t resist touching her for another second. She pushes two fingers inside of her and gasps as she does it. Beneath her, Villanelle’s moan comes out high-pitched and breathless.

“ _Y_ _es,_ Eve. Just like that.”

Eve can’t help but press forward and kiss her hard. Villanelle’s noises get caught between their lips, and Eve swallows them up hungrily as she begins moving her fingers in time to the rhythm of Villanelle’s breathing.

* * *

Villanelle feels good. 

Good, of course, is an understatement, but advanced thought has fled from Eve’s brain at the moment. She has two fingers deep inside Villanelle and Villanelle is making noises that have Eve’s body feeling like it’s been set ablaze. She feels her own arousal blooming between her thighs at the sights and sounds of the woman beneath her, but she does her best to ignore it. She wants to focus entirely on Villanelle; every moan, every sigh, every hint her body gives that tells Eve exactly what she wants and where.

Villanelle’s hand flies up and braces against the headboard of the bed and Eve knows that means she can work her fingers harder and faster. The younger woman tilts her head to the side, and Eve takes the unspoken invitation to press her lips against Villanelle’s neck. She kisses there, even bites there once or twice before she pulls back to watch Villanelle’s face again.

The younger woman’s eyes are closed and she’s breathing in short, high-pitched little moans as Eve rocks against her. Eve thinks she might be holding back, not letting herself fall over the edge, and so she leans forwards and presses a kiss to Villanelle’s lips, slowing the pace of her fingers slightly as she does so. 

“You can let go,” she whispers, breathing the words against Villanelle’s open mouth. “I’ve got you.”

Beneath her, Villanelle shudders and opens her eyes. “Again, Eve. Please?”

“I’ve got you.” Eve says it softly before pressing another kiss to Villanelle’s lips. It is gentle and chaste, but it is enough, and Villanelle moans gratefully against Eve’s lips as her body begins to tense in pleasure. 

Eve begins to pull away, intending to watch Villanelle succumb to her orgasm, but before she can move very far, Villanelle’s hands, fisted in the sheets or against the headboard until then, come up and grab at Eve needily. With one hand she grasps at Eve’s shoulder, digging her nails in hard. She hooks her other arm around Eve’s neck and pulls her back in close, but not for a kiss. Eve feels Villanelle’s lips against her throat, parted in a ragged breath as she tenses around Eve’s fingers. She cries out. It is muffled by Eve’s neck but the vibration of it travels down her spine and settles between her thighs and she can’t help but moan as well as Villanelle comes undone beneath her. 

The moment only lasts a few seconds and then Villanelle lets go, collapsing back into the bed with her eyes closed and muscles limp. Eve could almost follow suit, she is breathless and spent. Instead, though, she holds herself over the younger woman and waits for her to open her eyes. When she does, Villanelle looks up at Eve with wide eyes and an open mouth, her breathing still heavy.

Eve can’t think of anything to say. What slips out of her mouth is a breathless, little, “Hi.”

Surprisingly, Villanelle doesn’t laugh. She is too busy catching her own breath and looking at Eve like she is the sun after a storm. And then, almost shyly, she says, “Hi, Eve.”

And Eve can’t _not_ kiss her, after that.

* * *

Eve’s eyes are closed but she can picture the scene. Sun shines into the bedroom from the windows, their curtains pulled back to reveal the midday sky. Of course, being just shy of the Arctic Circle, it could as easily be the midnight sky, Eve supposes. Clothes would litter the floor around the bed; Villanelle’s pants and Eve’s pyjama shorts and Villanelle’s nice shirt and Eve’s baggy tee. And underwear, too. Eve blushes at the thought.

Then there would be the bed itself. The comforter would be askew, one corner probably mostly off and on the floor, but it would still cover their bodies.

 _Their bodies_.

Yeah, she’s blushing now for sure.

And under the comforter would be Villanelle, naked, asleep on her back. Or, Eve assumes she’s asleep since she’s been awfully quiet the last few minutes. And splayed across Villanelle’s chest is Eve, her nose nuzzling the crook of Villanelle’s neck, her back held possessively by one of Villanelle’s arms. Eve’s eyes are closed but she can picture it all.

She takes a deep breath and exhales slowly, feeling herself sink further into the warmth of Villanelle’s embrace. An errant thought pops into her head: she wonders what Carolyn would say if she could see her now. 

It’s enough to make Eve snort into Villanelle’s neck, and the younger woman groans in displeasure. 

“You are disgusting, Eve.”

Eve ignores the comment and entertains the thought. Carolyn probably wouldn’t be surprised. She had always seemed aware of the tension between Eve and Villanelle well before they were aware of it themselves. She wonders idly what Carolyn has been up to in the short time that she has run away with an ex-assassin. Would she still be hunting the Twelve after dispatching Paul? Would she still feel the need to avenge Kenny? Or would they be hunting her, looking for revenge?

That would not be good. But Carolyn can handle herself, Eve knows, so she tells herself not to worry. On the other hand, though, wasn’t Paul working from within MI6? Carolyn might not know who she could trust if the Twelve had been able to infiltrate British Intelligence. 

Would she be alone then? Or would she be willing to team up with Jamie and work from The Bitter Pill? Would he even be willing to keep investigating if he knew Carolyn was bringing the house down on his head?

What would she do then? Alone and with limited options… would she need help from Eve?

That seemed unlikely, and yet hadn’t Carolyn made sure, if inadvertently, that Eve was only of the only people who fully understood what the Twelve were up to, and the risks incurred in hunting them down. Eve might be the only one she could turn to, as much as she would find that irksome, no doubt.

Eve turns it all over in her mind. And then she realizes that Villanelle is speaking to her.

“What?” She pulls her head from its place on Villanelle’s shoulder and looks over at her.

“Oh, there you are. I thought maybe you were thinking about the sex we just had. In which case, you don’t need to just think about it because I would be happy to fuck you again, Eve.”

Eve rolls her eyes and forces Carolyn from her mind. “You’re impossible, you know that?” She can’t keep the edge in her voice, though, and she drags her finger under Villanelle’s jaw, tilting her head back gently.

“You are very sexy, Eve.” It’s spoken confidently, teasingly, as if she is two seconds from another suggestion that they go another round. 

Eve laughs and withdraws her hand, choosing instead to push herself up from Villanelle’s chest.

“Hey!” Villanelle exclaims as she pushes up on her elbows. “Come back.”

Eve keeps chuckling, starting to roll away from Villanelle until she feels a tug at her elbow and lets herself be pulled back. She rolls back to face Villanelle and props herself up on one elbow. “Yes?”

Villanelle reaches a hand behind Eve’s neck and pulls her in for a kiss. Eve feels the same heat and arousal from earlier just under the surface, threatening to engulf them both. But Villanelle doesn’t press her, she just kisses her softly before pulling back and sighing contentedly against her lips. “I was not ready for you to go yet.”

“Hmm,” Eve hums, “are you sure you’re the same deadly assassin who slit a man’s throat with a kitchen knife in front of me?”

Villanelle groans and rolls away slightly, throwing her arm in front of her face in mock shame. “Ugh. Aaron Peel. Don’t remind me, Eve.”

Eve smiles softly and presses a kiss to Villanelle’s jaw. “Come on, we should eat something. And-” she starts, catching Villanelle’s eyes where she can see them between her fingers, “-do _not_ make a sex joke.”

“Hmph.” Villanelle moves her hand aside and watches as Eve begins to climb out of bed. Before she can rise completely off the mattress, she reaches out and grabs Eve gently by the arm. “What were you thinking about earlier?”

Eve looks back at her and says, “Work.”

Villanelle’s eyes search hers but she finds nothing to comment on, simply saying, “Well that is not sexy at all, Eve,” before rolling back into the warmth of the blankets. 

Eve smiles, shakes her head slightly, and rises to go make them some breakfast. She resolves that this time, it won’t wind up a burnt and blackened mess in the trash bin.

* * *

They miss the 11 o’clock whale watching tour. Eve is just dishing scrambled eggs onto their plates when Villanelle comes up behind her and presses her lips to Eve’s neck. They wind up back in bed, and their breakfast goes cold.

With the 11 o’clock tour gone, they decide, once they finally leave the apartment, to go to the whale museum in the harbour. It is another sunny day in Husavik, and for that Eve feels lucky. Clouds ring the bay, but the town stays unshadowed, basking in the sunlight.

From the outside, the museum looks small and maybe a bit shabby, like a barn, but indoors it is grand and welcoming. Whale skeletons line the walls and ceiling, and while it is a dimly lit interior, it makes Eve feel cozy rather than trapped. They wander along the exhibit, and unlike at the penis museum in Reykjavik, this time Villanelle stays close by, brushing her hand against Eve’s and reading facts aloud whenever they pass by an infographic.

“A blue whale can eat up to 40 million krill in one day.

“A narwhal tusk can grow up to 3 metres long.

“An orca is not actually a whale, but is the largest member of the dolphin family.”

“Wait, what?” Eve actually turns her head at the last one. “I thought they were ‘killer whales’, and like, the assholes of the sea.”

Villanelle shrugs. “Eve, please, I am just reading the signs. You would have to ask a whale scientist. Or-” she rubs her chin thoughtfully, “-a dolphin scientist.”

“That’s crazy,” Eve huffs. “Don’t call it a killer whale if it’s not a whale.”

“I think you’re taking this a little personally, Eve.”

“You shush.” Eve points her finger threateningly at Villanelle. Villanelle looks at it, looks back up at Eve, and smirks.

“This would be more threatening if I didn’t know where your fingers have been already this morning-”

“Ugh!” Eve throws her hands up. “You’re impossible.” She turns to continue walking through the museum. A few seconds later she feels Villanelle’s hand wrap around her own.

“You like me like this, Eve. Even if you should not.”

“Oh for-” Eve tries to stay fake-mad, but her lips curl into an amused smile. “Just pay attention to the whale facts.”

Villanelle hums happily, and they continue their tour through the museum.

There is the skeleton of a blue whale that occupies an entire wall, and it is set up so that patrons can walk through its ribs. Eve and Villanelle do so, marvelling at the size of the animal. It is humbling, to say the least, and Eve finds it hard to think about her multitude of strange problems while she is within the ribcage of the world’s largest mammal. Further along, there is an interactive display where people can hold the whale vertebrae and ribs, but they don’t linger there as a group of children are huddled around the bones, shrieking and playing games. They move along to a dark room where whale calls play from speakers in the ceiling, and Eve thinks that they will keep on going but Villanelle drags her in and they sit for several minutes in silence, listening to songs from the deep.

“It is peaceful,” Villanelle says, breaking the silence, “but lonely."

They are sitting side-by-side on a small bench. The music plays around them. Eve cocks her head and meets Villanelle’s gaze. “It’s lonely to us, but to them, it’s probably quite beautiful.”

“Beautiful things can still be lonely.”

Eve can’t think of the right thing to say, not quick enough at least, so instead she leans forwards and presses a kiss on Villanelle’s cheek. She feels Villanelle lean into the touch gratefully, and against her skin, Eve smiles.

* * *

The days go by faster after that. They are a pleasant routine; cooking, sleeping, wandering around town, and exploring their new dynamic. They kiss and they touch and they have sex. They talk about things they’d never talked about with each other before. Families and childhoods. Eve tells Villanelle about her parents. Villanelle tells Eve about her brothers.

They do go whale watching again. The tour is another nearly empty one, and the whales are feeling rather shy that day. They don’t see as many as they had the first time, but they do come across the mother humpback and her calf again. Villanelle watches them, enchanted, and Eve watches her, transfixed. How many times has she really been able to do this, to just _watch her_?

Once it was obsession, but now affection curls its tendrils around her heart. And when affection settles and sinks in and warms her, cold shadows of fear take its place. She hasn’t been able to stop thinking about work, MI6, Carolyn. They can’t stay away forever.

And why can’t they, exactly? Why shouldn’t they? These questions keep her up at night after Villanelle has fallen silent and the sun finally sinks behind the horizon in the early hours of the morning. The answer she settles on is ultimately unsatisfying, but she holds on to it regardless, in the hopes that it will give her some direction. 

The end of the week comes far too quickly. They lay wrapped up in the bedsheets in their apartment and Eve breaches the topic they’ve avoided for days.

“What now?”

She is dragging a finger down the sharp line of Villanelle’s jaw when she asks it. Villanelle stares at her levelly and lets herself be touched.

“I would not like to go back to the way things were… would you?”

“No,” Eve replies, continuing the movement of her finger down the line of the younger woman’s throat. “But we can’t stay like this.”

“I know.” Villanelle sighs and rolls onto her back. “I am not sure what will happen, with what I did to Dasha-

“-We,” Eve cuts in, but Villanelle continues over her.

“-and Rhian. You did not meet her, Eve, but she was-” Villanelle scrunches her eyebrows and pauses. She seems to want to say something disparaging but then she stops. Maybe she is thinking about how Rhian died. “-Anyway. I think I will need to, how you say, ‘lay low’ for a bit. _Alone_.”

“Hm,” Eve hums. It’s what she expected. And she has reasons of her own for needing to go back to London, but it doesn’t make their situation anymore enjoyable. “So, when will I see you again?”

“When it makes sense to?”

Eve scoffs. “When have we ever done things sensibly?”

“I don’t know about you, Eve, but I am a _very_ sensible person.”

Eve laughs, and it makes the fear around her heart dissipate just a little. 

* * *

Eve flies back to London on her own. Villanelle kisses her goodbye at the Keflavik airport and Eve briefly wonders at all the ways she’s changed in the past week since walking the floors of the very same airport. 

Villanelle doesn’t tell her where she’s going, and Eve has boarded her flight long before Villanelle even heads to her gate, but Eve could never know that. She lands in London in the early evening and heads to her shitty apartment. It is raining, and London feels surprisingly ordinary. She basks in the anonymity of the big city streets.

It is when she opens the door and walks into her apartment that things really start to feel strange. The place feels like it hasn’t been entered in over a month; the air is stale and a bit damp, likely on account of the rain. It’s only been a week and yet Eve feels apprehensive about opening the fridge, like countless containers of takeout will have spoiled and gone rotten. In reality, the fridge is nearly empty and Eve sighs when she realizes there won’t be anything for her to eat tonight. There is a bottle of red wine on the counter. She grabs it by the neck, reaches for a glass, and settles herself on her bed. The bottle has a screw cap, thank god, and she pours herself a generous glass. Her bag sits at her feet and she’s already decided she won’t bother unpacking until tomorrow.

Eve sets her wineglass down on the nearby table and runs her hands through her hair. She thinks about the past several months: getting shot, separating from Niko, Kenny’s death, Niko’s stabbing. She thinks about the moments she felt closest to rock bottom. She thinks about the moments she felt the most alive. She admits to herself that she hadn’t done much to take her life into her own hands, some days, until Villanelle waltzed back into her life on that bus.

She decides that she doesn’t want to find herself brushing her teeth and washing her pits in the sink of the Bitter Pill bathroom again. Just using it as a normal bathroom, like a well-adjusted person. She thinks about Jamie, about the shit he told her that he’d gone through when he was a young and reckless asshole. He’s still a self-admitted asshole, and he’s the CEO of an investigative journalism website. Or something. Eve looks around at her shabby apartment, then she thinks about the apartment in Husavik. She decides it’s time for a change.

* * *

“How are you settling in, Eve?”

Jamie has come up behind her without her even noticing, Eve is so engrossed in her research. She doesn’t hear him the first time, and he clears his throat noisily to get her attention.

“Oh- what?”

He chortles. “I said, how are you settling in?”

Eve swivels around in her desk chair to face her new boss. She’s only had the job for two weeks, and Jamie has given her a small assignment researching election fraud. It’s nothing like chasing an international assassin, but it holds her attention and scratches her curiosity itch, as she’s come to think of it. Her insatiable desire to dig deeper, beneath the surface. Jamie has told her that he thinks she’ll do quite well, working at the Bitter Pill. Eve is beginning to think he might be right.

It’s almost a month after Iceland that she receives her first package. She is still in her dingy apartment but she’s saving money to move someplace better, and the package sits waiting outside the door when she comes home from work one evening. It is much less ostentatious than the gifts of the past but it still makes Eve’s heart race to pull the brown paper away from the box and cut the packing tape away from its lid. Inside, amongst gratuitous amounts of styrofoam packing peanuts, is a snowglobe.

 _Sarajevo_ is written in cursive lettering along the front. Inside, a small figurine depicting the city’s old clock tower sits amongst flecks of white, plastic pebbles. Eve smiles and turns the globe upside down, then she sets it right-side-up on the windowsill behind her bed. She rubs her thumb over the curve of the glass fondly.

It is two months after Iceland when she hears from Carolyn. She doesn’t ask for much, just whether or not Eve would consider working on a project with her in the future. She would be an ‘outside contract’, as Caroyln put it. Eve politely tells her that she’s going to need more information than that if she expects her to work with her again. Carolyn cryptically tells her that she’ll be in touch, and then she hangs up.

One week after that phone call she receives another package. The snowglobe is from Edinburgh, this time, and while Villanelle’s movements hardly make sense to Eve, it makes her giddy to know that Villanelle might be coming closer to London with every passing day. The snowglobe goes on the mantle with the other, and on a whim, Eve googles train tickets to Edinburgh. She has no intention of going, of course, but it never hurts to be prepared.

Three weeks later, another snowglobe, this one from Brussels. Eve stops imagining herself running off to meet Villanelle. It is quite possible she’d be gone from a place as soon as Eve got there, the way she seems to be moving around. Eve tries to be patient.

Finally, the day comes when she is gifted a snowglobe from London. She doesn’t really _need_ it, living there as she is, but she is more so pleased by what it means. Or by what she thinks it means, since its method of delivery was not at all what she’d expected.

Carolyn hands it to her, one gloomy evening after Eve swings open her apartment door to find the imperious woman standing in the hallway. It isn’t wrapped, and Carolyn places it firmly into her hand with hardly an explanation.

“Where did you get this?” Eve demands, incredulity battling with indignation at the sight of Carolyn outside her door. The woman looks the same as ever, hawk-eyed and imposing in a long jacket and slacks.

“Where do you think I got it, Eve? May I come in?”

Eve’s eyes are fixed on the snowglobe, and she cradles it gently in both hands as she replies sharply, ”No.”

Carolyn sighs. “So we must carry out our discussions in the common hallways now, must we? A far step from MI6, isn’t it?”

Eve pulls her eyes away from the trinket in her hands and glares at the older woman. “I have no intention of having any conversation with you at all.”

“Hm,” Carolyn hums, unfazed. “That’s rather a shame. Perhaps tomorrow then, over breakfast?”

“I just told you-”

“ _She_ is going to be there, Eve. You know,” she gestures vaguely at the snowglobe in Eve’s hands, “your… whatever term suits you. She’s helping me with a job. I’m hoping you will too.”

For a moment, Eve can’t think. She can hardly breathe. Blood rushes through her ears and she feels a bit unsteady. Then, she recovers. “Why should I believe you?”

“Oh, please, Eve. Who do you think gave me that to give to you?” Again, Carolyn waves at the knick-knack she gave Eve. “Now, here are the details. I will see you tomorrow morning.” And with that Carolyn hands her a piece of paper, turns, and abruptly walks away. As if as an afterthought, she pauses suddenly and half-turns back to Eve. “Oh, and I was told to tell you, from her, that this is the last job she needs to do. I think she means that she’ll be free to galavant around Europe with you, if you like, but I suppose I shouldn’t assume. This is why I don’t appreciate being made a messenger. She seemed to think it would make you more willing to join the team, though, so here I am. Rather low on options aren’t I?” The last bit she mutters to herself, before turning away again and continuing down the hall.

She doesn’t look back, but Eve wouldn’t notice anyway, her eyes are focused intently on the piece of paper Carolyn pressed into her hands before leaving, her brain turning over the words she said before walking away.

_The last job._

On the paper are written an address and a time: it is someplace downtown around midmorning. She folds the paper into her hand and returns her attention to the snowglobe. In its centre is the London Eye. Despite her misgivings about Carolyn, Eve feels herself begin to smile.

She turns back into her apartment and sits on her bed. The London snowglobe does not go with the others, not yet. Instead, she holds it in her hands and thinks about everything Carolyn told her.

One last job.

Eve smiles again, then laughs to herself, before pushing off the bed and padding over to her counter, looking for a bottle of wine. When she finds one, she pours herself a glass and wanders over to her humble closet. Inside it, there is a high shelf, and she places the snowglobe gingerly on it. It surveys her while she gets to work.

She begins flitting through her clothes, some old, some new in the past three months since Iceland. She finds an outfit that she knows Villanelle hasn’t seen before, one she thinks the younger woman will like. She puts it on and looks at herself in the mirror. She imagines what Villanelle will say when she sees it.

She will look Eve over, head to toe, after three months apart, her eyes taking her in unashamedly. Eve laughs to herself as the rest of the image takes shape. She takes another sip of wine as it plays out in her mind. Villanelle will step towards her and, for the sake of Carolyn standing nearby, she won’t kiss Eve, not yet. She’ll wait until they’re alone for that. She’ll look at Eve and all their feelings will pass unspoken between them, but what she’ll say will simply be,

“This is nice.”

Eve laughs at the thought. It is hardly the most romantic thing that someone could say, but they have never been the most conventional. 

But maybe, after this job, they could be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> took a while but we made it. 
> 
> thank you for reading  
> xo


End file.
